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THE  CRAFTSMANSHIP  OF  WRITING 


THE 

CRAFTSMANSHIP 

OF  WRITING 

BY 
FREDERIC  TABER  COOPER 


NEW   YORK 

DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY 

1920 


/^JUjM.AU>r^ 


^f^^  77 


Copyright,  1910,  igii 
By  DODD,  mead  &  COMPANY 


Ci7 


TO 

ARTHUR  BARTLETT  MAURICE 

in  recognition  of  long-standing  and  loyal  friend 

ship  as  well  as  of  his  special  kindliness 

towards  this  particular  volume, 

it  is  herewith  cordially 

inscribed 


PREFACE 

The  present  volume  is  the  outgrowth  of 
a  course  in  essay  writing,  offered  two  years 
ago  in  connection  with  the  University  Ex- 
tension work  of  Columbia  University.  It 
embodies  in  part  what  the  author  then  un- 
dertook to  teach  his  students,  supplemented 
by  what  the  students  quite  unconsciously 
taught  the  author.  There  was  a  class  which, 
taken  collectively,  offered  much  diversity  of 
scholarship,  a  wide  range  of  preparation 
for  writing.  Yet  one  and  all  of  them  pre- 
sented practically  the  same  sort  of  problem; 
one  and  all  said  in  effect :  "I  have  had  such 
and  such  training ;  I  have  worked  hard  and 
willingly;  yet  my  manuscripts  do  not  sell. 
What  is  the  matter  with  my  preparation? 
What  books  should  I  read?  What  course 
should  I  take?"  And  in  a  wider  way,  these 
are  the  questions  that  are  to-day  being  asked 
throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of  this 
continent.  Now  the  purpose  of  this  vol- 
ume is  to  answer  these  questions,  by  point- 
ing out  that  the  fault  is  primarily  with  the 


PREFACE 

would-be  authors  themselves,  and  not  with 
their  preparation.  The  best  teaching  they 
can  anywhere  receive  is  at  most  a  make- 
shift, a  mere  starting  point ;  they  must  learn 
to  rely  upon  themselves,  and  the  earlier  the 
better.  The  most  that  this  book  or  any 
other  can  do  is  to  guide  them  away  from 
certain  wrong  paths  and  toward  certain 
right  ones ;  they  must  cultivate  self-criticism, 
industry,  the  art  of  taking  infinite  pains,  the 
habit  of  looking  upon  to-day's  failures  as 
the  stepping  stones  toward  to-morrow's 
success.  The  laurels  of  authorship  are 
worth  the  winning  largely  because  there  is 
no  primrose  path  leading  to  them. 
New  York:  April  13,  191 1. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTEB  PAGB 

I    The  Inborn  Talent     ...  3 

II    The   Power   of   Self-Criticism  47 

III  The  Author*s  Purpose       .     .  79 

IV  The  Technique  of  Form    .     .  115 
V    The  Gospel  of  Infinite  Pains  153 

VI    The  Question  of  Clearness   .  179 

VII    The  Question  of  Style     .     .  209 

VIII    The  Technique  of  Translat- 
ing    .      .......  243 


I 

THE  INBORN  TALENT 


CHAPTER  I 

THE  INBORN   TALENT 

It  is  always  helpful,  in  writings  possessing 
even  the  mildest  of  text-book  flavour,  for 
author  and  reader  to  start  with  a  clear 
mutual  understanding  of  scope  and  pur- 
pose. The  best  way  in  which  to  forestall 
that  aggrieved  sense  which  a  student  often 
feels  of  having  derived  no  profit  from  a 
certain  book  or  article  or  lecture  course,  is 
to  say  frankly,  at  the  outset:  **  Here,  in 
brief,  is  what  we  intend  to  do.  If  your 
individual  case  falls  outside  these  limits, 
you  will  waste  your  time,  since  it  belongs 
upon  the  list  of  what  we  have  no  intention 
of  doing." 

In  the  present  volume  of  papers  on  The 
Craftsmanship  of  Writing,  the  best  and 

C  3  ] 


•  •  •  •  * 


.  : : ;;  :'\  ;T^E  INJBpRK  TALENT 

quickest  way  to  reach  this  helpful  under- 
standing is  to  explain  what  first  suggested 
them,  and  what  results  it  is  hoped  that  they 
will  achieve.  There  has  probably  never 
been  a  time  when  so  large  a  number  of  men 
and  women,  of  all  sorts  and  conditions, 
have  yielded  to  the  lure  of  authorship  — 
and  the  elemental,  naive  and  random  ques- 
tions that  they  often  ask  shows  that  there 
has  never  been  a  time  when  so  many  were 
in  need  of  a  word  of  friendly  guidance. 
And  this  is  precisely  what  the  present  vol- 
ume claims  to  give.  It  does  not  pretend  to 
point  a  royal  road  to  literature  —  to  fur- 
nish a  new  philosopher's  stone  for  trans- 
muting ordinary  citizens  into  famous  poets 
and  novelists.  It  has  no  ambition  to 
create  new  authors  —  since  authors  worthy 
of  the  name  are  born,  not  made  —  nor  to 
compete  with  the  efforts  of  our  college  Eng- 
lish Departments,  our  summer  lecture 
courses,   our  correspondence   schools   and 

[  4] 


THE  INBORN  TALENT 

literary  agencies  —  for  we  have  a  surfeit 
of  these  already.  The  aim  of  The  Crafts- 
manship of  Writing  is  nothing  more  pre- 
tentious than  to  help  would-be  writers  to 
reach  a  somewhat  saner,  more  logical  un- 
derstanding of  the  real  nature  of  the  pro- 
fession they  are  entering  upon,  both  on  its 
technical  and  its  artistic  side;  to  discount 
its  delays  and  disappointments;  and  above 
all,  to  learn  to  help  themselves  by  intelli- 
gent self-criticism.  For  it  is  a  somewhat 
curious  fact  that  there  is  no  other  line  of 
intellectual  work  in  which  a  man  or  a 
woman  may  remain,  through  months  and 
years,  so  fundamentally  ignorant  of  his  or 
her  real  worth. 

Now  the  reason  why  a  struggling  au- 
thor may  waste  years  of  misdirected  ef- 
fort, without  knowing  just  how  good  or 
bad  his  productions  really  are,  is  not  dif- 
ficult to  explain.  The  sources  of  any 
workman's  knowledge  of  his  worth   are 

[5  ] 


THE  INBORN  TALENT 

practically  only  three  in  number :  the  mar- 
ket value  of  his  ware;  his  own  self-criti- 
cism, and  the  opinions  of  others.  Now 
it  is  a  common  experience  among  young 
authors  to  find  through  weary  months  that 
their  wares  apparently  have  no  market 
value  at  all  —  this  does  away  with  the 
first  source  of  knowledge.  Secondly,  the 
ability  to  criticise  one's  self  in  a  detached, 
impartial  way  is  one  of  the  rarest  of  hu- 
man faculties  —  and  not  a  bit  less  rare  in 
authors  than  in  other  people.  Yet,  un- 
fortunately, it  is  upon  his  own  judgment 
that  every  young  writer  must  very  largely 
depend.  For  there  is  probably  no  other 
craft  or  employment  in  which  it  is  so  dif- 
ficult to  obtain  a  really  authoritative  opin- 
ion ^ —  for  the  excellent  reason  that  in  no 
other  craft  or  employment  is  there  such 
a  lack  of  any  general  requirement,  any 
standard  of  apprenticeship.  Indeed,  It  Is 
often  as  hard  to  guess  the  potential  powers 
C  6] 


THE  INBORN  TALENT 

of  a  beginner  in  letters  as  to  predict  how  a 
raw  recruit  is  likely  to  conduct  himself 
under  fire.  Let  us,  therefore,  take  up 
separately  these  two  questions:  First,  the 
various  kinds  of  critical  opinion  a  young 
author  is  able  to  obtain  upon  his  writings ; 
secondly,  the  nature  and  degree  of  system- 
atic training  it  is  possible  for  him  to  ac- 
quire. 

But  first  let  us  ask  one  more  prelimi- 
nary detail:  where  does  the  raw  recruit 
In  the  army  of  authorship  mainly  come 
from?  In  other  trades  and  professions 
there  is  some  sort  of  selective  barrier:  a 
college  degree,  a  regent's  certificate,  a 
Civil  Service  examination,  a  Union  Mem- 
bership, some  sort  of  initial  guarantee  of 
fitness.  Then,  too,  in  many  cases,  there 
is  the  prohibitive  question  of  expense.  It 
costs  both  time  and  money  to  become  a 
lawyer  or  physician  —  even  to  go  upon 
the  stage  means  nowadays  a  year  or  two 
[  7  ] 


-    THE  INBORN  TALENT 

in  a  dramatic  school,  if  one  does  not  want 
to  start  with  a  handicap.  In  contrast 
writing  seems  so  simple;  pen  and  ink,  a 
pad  of  paper,  a  table  in  a  quiet  corner  — 
these  to  the  uninitiated  seem  to  be  the  net 
amount  of  required  capital.  Frank  Nor- 
ris,  in  a  burst  of  rather  curious  optimism, 
once  wrote,  "  The  would-be  novel  writer 
may  determine  between  breakfast  and 
dinner  to  essay  the  plunge,  buy  ( for  a  few 
cents)  ink  and  paper  between  dinner  and 
supper,  and  have  the  novel  under  way 
before  bedtime.  How  much  of  an  outlay 
does  his  first  marketable  novel  represent? 
Practically  nothing.'*  Mr.  Norris  seems 
for  the  moment  to  have  forgotten  that  his 
own  first  "  marketable  novel,"  McTeague 
(although  published  subsequently  to  Mo- 
ran  of  the  Lady  Letty)  ^  represented  care- 
ful labour  scattered  over  a  period  of  four 
years,  and  that  a  portion  of  it  at  least  ne- 
cessitated quite  literally  a  further  delay 
[  8  ] 


THE  INBORN  TALENT 

than  that  of  ink  and  paper,  being  submitted 
in  part  fulfillment  of  the  requirements  of 
a  course  at  Harvard  University.  La 
Bruyere  came  considerably  nearer  the 
truth  when  he  cynically  wrote,  from  a  dif- 
ferent angle: 

A  man  starts  upon  a  sudden,  takes  Pen,  Ink 
and  Paper,  and  without  ever  having  had  a 
thought  of  it  before,  resolves  within  himself  to 
write  a  Book;  he  has  no  Talent  at  writing,  but 
he  wants  fifty  Guineas. 

Now,  as  In  every  other  attempt  to  ob- 
tain a  high  rate  of  interest  upon  a  small 
investment,  the  results  are  extremely 
precarious.  The  difference  in  this  par- 
ticular case  of  the  beginner  in  literature 
is  that  the  fault  lies  less  with  the  invest- 
ment than  with  the  Investor.  Out  of  a 
hundred  beginners,  taken  at  random,  no 
two  have  had  the  same  sort  or  degree  of 
training,  the  same  advantages  of  worldly 
[  9  ] 


THE  INBORN  TALENT 

knowledge,  the  same  allotment  of  that 
special  fitness  which  It  Is  convenient  to 
speak  of  as  the  Inborn  Talent.  And  It 
would  be  most  extraordinary  If  all  of 
them,  or  any  considerable  portion  of 
them  should  have.  The  field  is  open  to 
all  comers,  without  prejudice  of  colour, 
sex  or  age.  And  so  we  find  competing 
side  by  side,  the  university  man,  with 
half  a  dozen  letters  after  his  name;  the 
young  woman  from  some  Western  farm, 
who  thinks  herself  a  second  Mrs.  Brown- 
ing; the  underpaid  teacher,  the  starveling 
minister,  the  physician  with  a  dwindling 
practice,  who  seek  to  eke  out  a  meagre 
income  with  an  occasional  magazine  ar- 
ticle; the  society  woman  and  the  man  of 
leisure  whose  whim  it  is  to  see  them- 
selves in  print;  the  suffragette,  the  sweet 
girl  graduate,  the  whole  motley  host 
that,  rightly  or  wrongly,  believe  them- 
selves to  have  the  Inborn  Talent.     Now, 

[10] 


THE  INBORN  TALENT 

if  these  new  writers  seek  advice  —  and 
sooner  or  later  they  practically  all  of  them 
do  —  from  whom  can  they  seek  it? 
What  avenues  are  open  to  them? 

Some  writers,  of  course,  are  more  for- 
tunately placed  than  others,  in  this  re- 
spect; but  in  practice  it  will  be  found  that 
the  usual  sources  of  criticism,  whether  fa- 
vourable or  hostile,  narrow  down  to  four: 
I.  The  biassed  opinions  of  interested 
friends;  II.  The  bought  opinions  of  pro- 
fessional advisers;  III.  The  rejections  or 
acceptances  of  editors,, either  with  or  with- 
out comment;  IV.  The  published  criti- 
cisms in  the  review  departments  of  news- 
papers and  magazines.  Now,  as  already 
said,  there  is  a  certain  degree  of  luck  in  all 
four  of  these  sources  of  criticism.  Thus, 
to  take  them  up  in  order,  the  opinions  of 
the  first  class  may  not  always  be  biassed. 
A  young  author  may  have  the  good  luck 
to  number  among  his  friends  or  relatives 

[II] 


THE  INBORN  TALENT 

one  or  more  authors  of  big  accomplish- 
ment and  fine  discernment  who  may 
serve  the  place  of  literary  godfather,  and 
who  in  rare  and  wonderful  Instances,  such 
as  that  of  Flaubert  and  Maupassant,  ac- 
tuallse  that  Ideal  form  of  apprenticeship 
which  all  the  arts  enjoy  save  only  that  of 
letters.  Again,  it  sometimes  happens 
that  a  beginner  Is  fortunate  enough  to 
choose  for  his  adviser  a  professional 
reader  whose  horizon  happens  to  be  wider 
than  that  of  the  mere  market  value  of  lit- 
erary ware,  and  whose  suggestions  stimu- 
late the  growth  of  his  mentality  as  well 
as  of  his  bank  account.  And  then  again, 
there  are  editors,  who,  in  spite  of  the  bur- 
den they  carry,  are  not  always  too  busy 
to  send,  with  a  rejected  manuscript,  a  line 
or  two  of  welcome  advice  to  a  young  au- 
thor whom  they  see  to  be  stumbling  need- 
lessly —  or  a  few  words  of  equally  valued 
praise  to  the  be^nner  whose  first  work 

[12] 


THE  INBORN  TALENT 

shows,  through  all  its  crudeness,  the  un- 
mistakable gleam  of  the  Inborn  Talent. 
And  as  to  the  fourth  class,  that  of  the  pro- 
fessional critic,  there  are  a  good  many 
successful  authors  who  freely  admit  the 
debt  they  owe  to  him  for  many  a  frank 
word  of  praise  or  censure  in  earlier  years. 
Indeed,  this  last  source  of  outside  help 
ought  to  be  the  most  disinterested  and  the 
most  useful  of  them  all.  That  it  is  not, 
is  due  to  two  simple  and  rather  obvious 
facts:  first,  that  it  cannot  possibly  reach 
the  novice  in  letters  until  he  begins  to  get 
his  writings  into  print;  secondly,  that  the 
rank  and  file  of  reviewers  think  it  their 
duty  to  speak  to  the  readers  of  books 
rather  than  to  the  writers  of  them  —  to 
tell  the  general  public  why  they  ought  to 
like  or  dislike  a  certain  volume,  instead  of 
telling  the  author  in  what  particulars  his 
work  was  good  and  in  what  others  it  might 
have  been  better. 

[13] 


THE  INBORN  TALENT 

"  I  believe,"  says  Sir  Walter  Besant,  in 
his  Autobiography,  "  that  one  can  count 
on  ten  fingers  the  few  critics  whose  judg- 
ments are  lessons  of  instruction  to  writ- 
ers as  well  as  readers/' 

It  is  this  dearth  of  real  enlightenment 
that  makes  so  many  first  attempts  — 
whether  poetry  or  prose,  essays,  stories 
or  special  articles  —  sheer  guess-work, 
groplngs  in  the  dark.  Hundreds  of  first 
manuscripts,  and  second  and  third  manu- 
scripts, too,  are  written  with  tremulous 
hopes  and  fears,  absurdly  overvalued  one 
moment  and  blackly  despaired  of  the  next. 
They  start  out  on  their  travels,  meekly  sub- 
mitted "  at  your  usual  rates,"  and  soon 
come  homing  back,  with  only  the  empty 
civility  of  a  printed  slip  to  save  them  from 
the  waste-paper  basket.  That  is  a  fair 
statement  of  the  average  beginner's  expe- 
rience, is  it  not?  And  it  is  looked  upon  as 
quite  in  the  natural  course  of  things,  a 

[H] 


THE  INBORN  TALENT 

special  application  of  the  economic  law  of 
supply  and  demand.  It  places  the  young 
author  in  the  same  category  with  every 
other  class  of  workman  who  goes  around 
peddling  the  produce  of  his  handiwork. 
And  if  that  produce  does  not  happen  to 
be  wanted,  there  is  no  logical  reason  why 
anyone  should  be  required  to  buy  it, 
whether  it  be  a  sonnet  or  a  sugared  waffle. 
In  an  essay  entitled,  V Argent  dans  la 
Litterature,  Zola  writes,  with  customary 
bluntness:  "The  State  owes  nothing  to 
young  writers;  the  mere  fact  of  having 
written  a  few  pages  does  not  entitle  them 
to  pose  as  martyrs,  because  no  one  will 
print  their  work.  A  shoemaker  who  has 
made  his  first  pair  of  shoes  does  not 
force  the  government  to  sell  them  for  him. 
It  is  the  workman's  place  to  dispose  of  his 
work  to  the  public.  And  if  he  can't  do  it, 
if  he  is  a  nobody,  he  remains  unknown 
through  his  own  fault,  and  quite  justly  so." 

[15] 


THE  INBORN  TALENT 

Now  it  does  no  good  to  argue  that  there 
is  something  radically  wrong  about  the 
present  system.  It  is  quite  sufficient  if  we 
frankly  recognise  that  literature  occupies 
an  anomalous  position,  and  to  seek  for  the 
reason.  The  great  advantage  that  the  arts 
and  professions  enjoy  in  theory  over  trade 
and  business  is  that  they  aim  to  produce 
objects  of  such  beauty  or  service  of  such 
importance  that  the  ordinary  laws  of  mar- 
ket value  do  not  apply  to  them.  Aside 
from  literature,  there  is  no  profession,  ex- 
cepting the  closely  allied  one  of  the  maga- 
zine illustrator,  which  is  subjected  to  a  like 
degree  of  precarious  uncertainty.  Archi- 
tects, it  is  true,  do  occasionally  enter  plans 
in  a  competition  for  some  big  public  build- 
ing—  but  this  is  an  exception  to  the  cus- 
tom of  their  craft,  a  gamble  which  they 
enter  into  voluntarily,  fully  prepared  to  be 
cheerful  losers.  Young  artists  may  re- 
peatedly have  their  pictures  refused  admis- 
[i6] 


THE  INBORN  TALENT 

sion  to  the  annual  Salons ;  but  at  least  they 
have  the  comfort  of  knowing  that  there  was 
just  one  ground  for  such  refusals,  namely, 
that  the  pictures  were  not  sufficiently 
good  art.  A  doctor  has  some  trouble 
in  getting  his  first  case,  a  lawyer  in  getting 
his  first  brief;  but  when  oncie  they  have  se- 
cured respectively  a  client  and  a  patient, 
they  count  upon  being  regularly  employed; 
it  is  inconceivable  that  they  should  be  dis- 
missed with  a  printed  notice  that  their 
dismissal  "  does  not  imply  a  criticism  of 
their  intrinsic  merits."  Even  your  corner 
grocer,  if  you  leave  him  without  specified 
reason  and  go  to  a  competitor  halfway 
down  the  block,  considers  it  a  criticism, 
and  one  that  he  has  a  right  to  resent. 

As  already  implied,  there  is  a  very  simple 
reason  why  the  man  of  letters  stands  in  a 
class  apart.  The  artist  and  sculptor,  the 
lawyer  and  doctor,  even  the  grocer  and  the 
plumber,   have   all   in  their  several  ways 

[17] 


THE  INBORN  TALENT 

served  a  long  and  relatively  costly  appren- 
ticeship. They  have,  to  put  It  colloqui- 
ally, learned  their  job  before  they  have 
been  allowed  to  practise  for  themselves. 
Whether  they  will  become  distinguished  In 
their  several  callings  or  even  demonstrate 
an  average  skill  remains  to  be  proved. 
But  they  start  with  a  certain  guaranteed 
fund  of  foundation  knowledge,  a  certain 
preliminary  craftsmanship.  It  Is  conceiv- 
able, of  course,  that  a  medical  student 
might  in  his  first  year,  successfully  treat 
some  simple  case  of  croup  or  whooping- 
cough.  But  that  one  achievement  would 
not  give  him  sufficient  self-assurance  to 
hang  out  his  sign,  even  if  the  laws  of  his 
State  permitted  such  recklessness.  Yet 
when  the  merest  tyro  in  writing  happens 
by  some  lucky  hit  to  write  a  story  good 
enough  to  win  acceptance,  or  even,  let  us 
say,  a  story  that  has  somehow  won  ac- 
ceptance although  not  good  enough,  his 
[18] 


THE  INBORN  TALENT 

pendulum  of  self-criticism  swings  to  the 
outmost  verge  of  elation.  He  refuses 
to  entertain  the  possibility  of  further  re- 
jections. He  begins  to  multiply  the  num- 
ber of  stories  he  can  write  a  month  by  the 
number  of  months  In  the  year,  and  the 
product  again  by  the  number  of  dollars  on 
his  first  cheque. 

Of  course,  In  a  majority  of  cases,  such 
dreams  are  doomed  to  the  same  fate  as  in 
the  fable  of  the  "Pot  of  Milk"  — and 
It  is  fortunate  for  the  world  at  large,  and 
doubly  fortunate  for  the  young  author  that 
this  Is  so.  The  truth  is  that  In  literature, 
as  in  every  other  art,  there  Is  no  such 
thing  as  a  royal  road  to  fame.  Just  be- 
cause a  writer  Is  free  to  hang  out  his 
shingle,  so  to  speak,  at  the  very  beginning, 
it  does  not  by  any  means  follow  that  he  is 
permanently  exempted  from  serving  an 
apprenticeship.  And  this  fact  Is  the  sole 
excuse  for  dwelling  at  length  upon  so  com- 

[  19  ] 


THE  INBORN  TALENT 

monplace  a  grievance  as  rejected  manu- 
scripts. Every  young  writer  knows,  of 
course,  that  he  faces  repeated  rejection; 
but  very  few  recognise  that  each  manu- 
script that  comes  back  is  part  of  their  edu- 
cation, a  definite  amount  of  the  time  and 
effort  which  every  apprentice  Is  expected  to 
pay. 

The  present  writer  well  remembers  his 
own  first  attempts  to  write  short  stories, 
while  still  a  college  undergraduate,  and 
his  surprise  and  resentment  when  one  by 
one  the  magazines  failed  to  appreciate 
them.  He  grudged  the  labour  spent  upon 
them ;  he  felt,  in  a  vague  sort  of  way,  that 
he  had  been  defrauded.  College  themes, 
curiously  enough,  rested  on  a  different 
basis.  The  time  spent  on  them  involved 
no  Irritation,  although  they  were  doomed 
in  advance  to  be  still-born.  The  reason 
for  this  difference  was  that  the  writer 
recognised  his  college  themes  as  part  of 

[20] 


THE  INBORN  TALENT 

the  cost  of  preparation,  and  that  he  had 
not  yet  learned  that  his  rejected  manu- 
scripts were  also  part  of  that  same  prep- 
aration —  and  by  far  the  more  important 
part. 

"  The  worst  of  all  evils,  for  a  begin- 
ner," says  Zola,  in  the  above-mentioned 
essay,  "is  to  arrive  and  to  succeed  too 
soon.  He  ought  to  know  that  behind 
every  solid  reputation  there  He  at  least 
twenty  years  of  effort  and  of  labour." 

What  each  man  or  woman  learns 
from  a  rejection  depends,  of  course, 
upon  the  circumstances  of  the  indi- 
vidual case.  It  may  teach  nothing  more 
than  the  unwisdom  of  submitting  a  certain 
type  of  story  or  article  to  one  particular 
magazine;  or  again,  it  may  bring  a  salu- 
tary awakening  to  the  fact  that  what  the 
author  fondly  believed  to  be  a  master- 
piece is,  after  all,  a  rather  tawdry  and 
banal  performance.     But  in  any  case,   a 

[  21  ] 


THE  INBORN  TALENT 

setback  is  wholesome  discipline  if  it  makes 
a  writer  ask  himself  seriously  what  is  the 
matter  with  his  work  —  for  it  is  better  to 
tear  up  half  a  dozen  good  manuscripts 
than  to  let  a  single  bad  one  find  its  way 
into  print.  "  As  remediless  as  bad  work 
once  put  forward,"  Is  a  wise  little  simile 
of  Mr.  Kipling's  —  you  will  find  it  in 
The  Light  that  Failed^  not  far  from  the 
point  at  which  the  two  versions  of  that 
story  part  company.  It  must,  however,  be 
borne  in  mind  that  no  sort  of  apprentice- 
ship ever  created  genius  —  Its  utmost 
value  is  to  develop  technical  skill.  In 
every  art  there  are  two  indispensable  quali- 
ties —  an  Inborn  Talent  and  a  slowly  and 
painfully  acquired  technique  —  the  only 
difference,  in  the  case  of  literature,  bemg 
that  the  technique  must  in  the  main  be 
self-taught.  The  Inborn  Talent  is,  by  its 
very  definition,  a  thing  unteachable,  al- 
though it  may  be  discovered,  fostered  and 

[22] 


THE  INBORN  TALENT 

developed.  It  can  no  more  be  created  by 
teachers  of  rhetoric  or  grammar  than  a 
singing-master  can  create  a  voice.  But  the 
would-be  singer  has  this  big  advantage 
over  the  would-be  writer,  in  that  he  can 
easily  find  a  teacher  of  authority  who  will 
tell  him  in  the  course  of  a  single  interview 
frankly  and  conclusively  whether  his  case 
is  hopeless  or  not  —  while  the  young  au- 
thor has  no  chance  of  getting  such  an  opin- 
ion, and  if  he  had  would  probably  refuse 
to  credit  it. 

The  result  is  that  most  new  writers  are 
left  to  learn  their  value,  slowly  and  pain- 
fully, in  the  unsparing  school  of  experience. 
And  the  nature  of  the  lesson  is  best  grasped 
by  applying  it  to  the  analogous  art  of 
painting.  Suppose  the  young  artist  left 
quite  to  himself,  thrown  wholly  on  his  own 
judgment,  regarding  subject  and  composi- 
tion, colour,  light  and  shade.  He  paints 
and  paints,  picture  after  picture,  with  only 

[23] 


THE  INBORN  TALENT 

his  instinct  to  tell  him  whether  they  are 
good  or  bad  —  and  every  now  and  then 
someone  having  authority  comes  along  and 
blots  them  out  with  turpentine  or  a  palette 
knife,  and  with  no  word  of  explanation. 
The  young  artist  tries  again,  and  still 
again  —  and  if  he  has  the  Inborn  Talent, 
it  is  conceivable  that  he  may  grow  slowly 
through  his  own  efforts,  helped  only  by 
this  purely  destructive  criticism,  until  he 
achieves  real  greatness.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  this  is  not  the  road  over  which  the 
great  painters  have  travelled,  but  it  is  the 
road  by  which  the  masters  of  literature 
have  attained  their  goal. 

Now  let  us  suppose,  for  the  sake  of 
argument,  that  a  young  writer  is  in  no 
haste  to  see  himself  In  print,  that  he  would 
be  glad  to  have  some  sort  of  systematic  in- 
struction through  a  period  of  years,  anal- 
ogous to  that  of  the  other  arts  and  crafts : 
what  possible  avenues  are  open  to  him? 

[24] 


THE  INBORN  TALENT 

The  Inborn  Talent,  of  course,  cannot  be 
taught;  but  the  technique  of  good  writing 
not  only  can  be  taught,  but  ought  to  be. 
Yet  at  present,  and  I  say  this  advisedly, 
we  have  not  a  single  well  equipped  school 
of  instruction  in  technique  —  nothing 
which  even  pretends  to  do  for  writing 
what  the  conservatories  do  for  vocal  and 
instrumental  music,  and  schools  like  the 
Beaux  Arts  for  painting  and  architecture. 
The  odd  thing  is  that  people  have  fallen 
into  the  habit  of  thinking  that  we  do  pos- 
sess such  opportunities  for  Instruction. 
Our  schools  and  colleges  and  universities 
are  paying  more  attention  than  ever  to 
rhetoric  and  theme  writing.  Children 
daily  puzzle  their  parents  with  intricacies 
of  sentence  diagrams  and  strange  nomen- 
clature of  grammar  undreamed  of  In  an 
earlier  generation.  And  yet  the  average 
city  editor  will  tell  you  that  the  young  col- 
lege graduate  has  almost  as  much  to  un- 

[25] 


THE  INBORN  TALENT 

learn  as  to  learn  before  he  becomes  a  use- 
ful member  of  the  staff.  The  late  David 
Graham  Phillips,  who  heartily  concurred 
in  this  view  of  the  value  of  college  English, 
was  fond  of  telling  the  story  of  how  and 
why  he  lost  his  first  newspaper  position. 
It  was  when  he  was  fresh  from  his  studies 
at  Princeton,  that  after  a  good  deal  of 
persistence  he  obtained  a  position  on  a 
leading  western  newspaper,  to  which  he 
offered  his  services  free  of  salary.  Al- 
though It  was  mid-winter  and  the  city 
room  was  barn-like  in  temperature,  he  tells 
how  he  used  to  sit  at  his  desk  with  the  per- 
spiration of  mental  labour  pouring  from 
his  brow,  while  he  struggled  to  make  liter- 
ature with  a  capital  L  from  such  material 
as  **  This  afternoon  John  Smith,  a  house- 
painter,  fell  off  a  ladder  and  broke  his 
arm."  Mr.  Phillips  had  held  his  unsal- 
aried position  for  about  ten  days  when  the 
higher    power    who    presided    over    the 

[26] 


THE  INBORN  TALENT 

paper's  destinies  happened  to  come  through 
the  city  room.  "Who  is  that  man?"  he 
asked,  indicating  Mr.  Phillips.  The  city 
editor  explained.  "  Discharge  him,"  came 
the  curt  mandate.  "  But  we  are  getting 
him  for  nothing,"  protested  the  city  editor. 
"  I  don't  care  if  he  is  paying  for  the  privi- 
lege," came  the  rejoinder;  "  discharge  him 
immediately!  I  can't  bear  to  see  any  hu- 
man being  work  so  hard  I  " 

The  trouble  is  that  in  writing  we  have 
confused  the  medium  with  the  art ;  we  have 
been  content,  a  good  deal  of  the  time,  to 
teach  language  where  we  meant  to  teach 
technique.  Writing  differs  from  the  other 
arts  in  this:  that  from  earliest  childhood, 
its  medium  of  expression  has  been  more 
or  less  familiar,  more  or  less  skilfully 
employed.  A  child  of  five  who  cannot 
put  together  simple  sentences  that  express 
his  physical  needs  is  considered  mentally 
deficient;  whereas,  if  he  can  already  whistle 

[27] 


THE  INBORN  TALENT 

or  sing  a  popular  alf  correctly  his  family 
indicate  the  fact  with  pride;  and  if  he  can 
draw  a  cow  that  really  looks  like  a  cow 
-and  not  like  an  abnormal  table  endowed 
with  horns  and  tail,  he  is  an  infant  prodigy. 
But  if  we  could  conceive  of  a  race  of  in- 
telligent deaf  mutes  whose  customary  mode 
of  communication  was  a  highly  developed 
picture  language,  then  we  might  imagine 
a  manual  skill  of  draughtsmanship  acquired 
from  early  childhood  that  would  place  the 
medium  of  the  painter  on  an  equality  with 
that  of  the  writer  to-day. 

Now  in  our  schools  and  colleges,  with 
the  best  intentions  in  the  world,  what  is 
actually  achieved  goes  very  little  beyond 
an  increased  dexterity  in  the  use  of  the 
medium,  language.  Grammar  and  rhet- 
oric, even  the  ability  to  say  quite  accu- 
rately certain  simple  and  obvious  things,  do 
not  make  up  the  technique  of  good  writ- 
ing, any  more  than  the  ability  to  draw  a 

[  28  ] 


THE  INBORN  TALENT 

circle  or  a  straight  line  or  to  match  colours 
makes  up  the  technique  of  good  painting. 
And  even  those  few  courses  which  the  Eng- 
lish departments  of  our  larger  universi- 
ties have  in  recent  years  established  for 
the  benefit  of  their  graduate  students  — 
courses  in  the  structure  of  the  short  story 
and  the  play  and  the  novel — ^although 
they  are  an  encouraging  step  in  the  right 
direction,  are  not  either  in  kind  or  in  de- 
gree quite  comparable  to  the  practical 
training  that  is  open  to  students  in  every 
other  branch  of  art.  The  best  instruction 
in  any  craft  or  profession  is  a  practical 
training  by  someone  who  has  already 
proved  himself  a  master  of  it.  The  in- 
structors in  our  medical  schools,  our  sem- 
inaries, our  schools  of  law,  are  nearly  al- 
ways men  who  have  won  their  reputation  in 
the  sick  chamber,  the  pulpit,  the  court- 
room. And  this  is  the  one  logical  source 
of  learning.     Yet  in  authorship  the  chance 

[29] 


THE  INBORN  TALENT 

of  working  directly  under  the  guidance  of 
a  master  has,  so  far  as  I  can  recall,  been 
exemplified  in  practice  on  a  large  scale 
only  once  in  the  history  of  letters  —  and 
that  was  In  the  special  brand  of  historical 
romance  tirelessly  produced  by  the  author 
of  Les  Trois  Mousquetaires  and  his  ap- 
prentices— ^satirically  designated  as  Du- 
mas et  Cie,  Fahrique  de  Romans.  College 
instruction  in  the  art  of  writing  is,  with  a 
few  brilliant  exceptions,  given  by  men  who 
are  trained  critics  rather  than  creative 
writers  —  men  who  know  infinitely  more 
about  taking  a  work  to  pieces  than  about 
putting  it  together.  Dissecting  Is  an  impor- 
tant part  of  class  work  In  a  course  in  bot- 
any, but  It  does  not  help  us  to  a  knowledge 
of  how  to  grow  a  rose.  And  you  will  learn 
more  about  building  a  cathedral  by  watch- 
ing It  go  together,  stone  by  stone,  than  by 
seeing  a  gang  of  professional  wreckers 
dustily  pulling  it  down. 

[30] 


THE  INBORN  TALENT 

Are  we  to  understand,  then,  someone 
win  ask,  that  the  English  courses  in  col- 
leges and  graduate  schools  are  a  waste 
of  time?  Emphatically  no,  not  by  any 
means,  so  long  as  we  do  not  mistake  the 
nature  of  their  help.  So  far  as  they  go 
they  are  of  distinct  value  to  a  student  with 
ambition  for  authorship  —  valuable  in  the 
same  way  that  courses  in  literature  and 
foreign  languages  are  valuable;  but  they 
carry  him  no  further  in  his  technical  train- 
ing than  college  courses  in  biology  or  con- 
stitutional history  carry  a  student  forward 
in  the  practice  of  medicine  or  the  law. 

Professor  A.  S.  Hill,  whose  English 
courses  are  a  pleasant  memory  to  Harvard 
men  of  the  older  generation,  wrote  pes- 
simistically only  a  few  years  ago,  in  a  little 
volume  entitled  Our  English: 

Under  the  most  favourable  conditions,  the 
results  of  English  composition  as  practiced  in 
college  are,  it  must  be  confessed,  discouraging. 

[31] 


THE  INBORN  TALENT 

The  shadow  of  generations  of  perfunctory  writers 
seems  to  rest  upon  the  paper,  and  only  here  and 
there  is  it  broken  by  a  ray  of  light  from  the 
present.  ...  I  know  of  no  language  — 
ancient  or  modern,  civilized  or  savage  —  so  in- 
sufficient for  the  purposes  of  language,  so  dreary 
and  inexpressive,  as  theme-language  in  the  mass. 

The  practical  question,  then,  Is :  In  the 
absence  of  special  training-schools  what 
advice  should  be  given  to  a  beginner? 
Are  there  any  lines  of  special  study  that 
he  may  follow,  any  form  of  self-training 
that  he  may  put  himself  through?  The 
answer  is:  Yes,  there  Is  the  theoretical 
help  of  text-books  on  technique,  and  there 
is  the  practical  training  of  journalism. 
But  It  is  well  to  remember,  on  the  one 
hand,  that  all  the  text-books  ever  written 
on  the  English  novel  will  not  make  a  novels 
ist,  any  more  than  Ruskln's  Modern  Paint' 
ers,  even  though  committed  to  memory, 
would  make  a  Mlllais  or  a  Bouguereau. 

[32] 


THE  INBORN  TALENT 

A  newspaper  training  is  a  good,  whole- 
some tonic,  especially  as  an  antidote  to 
the  stilted  heaviness  of  the  academic  style. 
It  gives  a  certain  fluency,  a  certain  collo- 
quial tone  that  makes  for  freedom.  "  To 
the  wholesome  training  of  severe  newspa- 
per work  when  I  was  a  very  young  man,  I 
constantly  refer  my  first  successes,"  was 
Dickens's  stereotyped  reply  to  the  questions 
of  American  reporters.*  And  yet  one  hesi- 

♦The  late  Edouard  Rod  declared  himself  even 
more  emphatically  in  favour  of  a  newspaper  training: 
"Journalism  is  an  excellent  school:  it  stimulates  slug- 
gish minds,  it  disciplines  roving  imaginations,  it 
brings  into  direct  contact  with  the  public  certain 
writers  who  otherwise  would  have  remained  unknown 
to  the  general  public,  and  who  during  the  process  of 
becoming  known,  learn  reciprocally  to  know  their 
public.  This  is  useful  and  healthy:  because  it  is,  af- 
ter all,  for  others  that  we  write.  .  .  .  The  school 
of  journalism  is  exacting  and  wearisome,  it  is  true; 
but  that  is  not  an  evil.  Certain  writers,  they  tell  you, 
in  the  slang  of  the  editorial  room,  *  write  themselves 
dry ; '  but  it  is  only  those  who  had  nothing  of  im- 
portance to  lose." 

[33] 


THE  INBORN  TALENT 

tates  to  recommend  it  with  the  same  assur- 
ance with  which  it  was  to  be  recommended 
a  quarter  century  ago.  For  if  the  younger 
generation  of  American  writers  have  any 
one  conspicuous  fault  in  common,  it  is  that 
of  too  journalistic  a  style. 

But  there  is  one  question  which  every 
amateur  writer  should  ask  himself  in  ad- 
vance of  everything  else,  and  that  is: 
Has  he  the  Inborn  Talent?  Has  he  any 
talent  at  all,  anything  worth  the  saying  — 
worth,  that  is,  the  trouble  of  learning  to 
say  in  the  best  possible  manner?  Has  he 
ideas  ?  —  not  mere  raw  material,  in  the 
form  of  things  seen  and  experiences  lived 
—  but  ideas  about  them  that  may  be  of 
importance  or  interest  to  some  portion  of 
the  world  at  large.  Let  us  ask  this  direct 
question  of  every  man  and  woman  who 
reads  these  pages:  Have  you  taken  any 
pains  to  satisfy  yourself  that  you  possess 
this  Inborn  Talent?    If  not,  do  so  without 

[343 


THE  INBORN  TALENT 

delay,  before  you  scatter  futile  ink  over 
another  sheet  of  wasted  paper.  And  It 
is  not  just  a  question  of  having  or  not 
having  the  creative  Instinct,  but  of  hav- 
ing it  in  sufficient  degree  to  make  Its  de- 
velopment really  worth  while.  For  the 
Inborn  Talent  in  a  writer  may  be  com- 
pared to  the  grade  of  ore  In  a  mine  —  the 
question  Is  not  simply  whether  there  Is  any 
precious  metal  there  at  all,  but  whether  it 
is  present  In  paying  quantities.  It  is  well 
to  find  out,  if  you  can,  just  how  richly 
your  talent  will  assay,  and  then  work  it  ac- 
cordingly. 

But,  you  may  retort,  how  is  any  one  to 
find  out  whether  he  has  talent?  Who  is 
to  be  the  judge?  How  can  the  author 
himself  or  any  one  else  know  surely 
whether  repeated  rejections  through  a 
course  of  months  mean  hopeless  medi- 
ocrity or  the  handicap  of  crude  methods 
—  whether  Improvement  Is   a  matter  of 

[35] 


THE  INBORN  TALENT 

being  born  again  or  merely  of  buckling 
down  and  laboriously  learning  the  job? 
And  just  here,  of  course,  lies  the  real  diffi- 
culty of  making  this  advice  practical. 
No  one  can  answer  this  first  and  most  im- 
portant question  for  you  —  no  one,  at 
least,  so  authoritatively  as  to  convince  you 
even  against  your  will.  But  you  yourself 
can  answer  a  few  frank  questions  that  will 
go  a  long  way  toward  enlightening  you: 
Why  are  you  trying  to  write?  What 
preparations  have  you  had  that  make  you 
believe  you  are  qualified?  How  long  ago 
did  you  begin  to  try?  What  sort  of  en- 
couragement have  you  so  far  received? 
These  are  questions  which  no  one  else  can 
answer  for  you;  for  no  two  cases  are  pre- 
cisely alike.  But  you  cannot  answer  them 
honestly  without  having  a  strong  convic- 
tion steal  over  you  either  that  you  have  or 
that  you  have  not  the  Inborn  Talent. 
Do  you  write,  for  instance,  as  the  born 

C36] 


THE  INBORN  TALENT 

artist  paints  or  the  born  musician  plays, 
because  you  feel  a  compelling  necessity 
for  self-expression?  Or  do  you  write 
as  the  house  painter  wields  his  brush  or 
the  barrel-organ  man  turns  his  handle, 
merely  for  the  sake  of  the  dollars  or  the 
dimes?  Have  you  strong  prejudices  In 
regard  to  the  kind  of  writing  you  are 
ready  to  do  ?  Or  are  you  willing  to  write 
in  any  form,  on  any  subject,  from  a  sonnet 
to  a  breakfast  food  advertisement?  Most 
of  us  at  one  time  or  another  have  found 
ourselves  under  the  temporary  necessity  of 
doing  something  more  or  less  in  the  nature 
of  "  hack-work,''  work  that  not  only  meant 
drudgery  but  that  took  us  away  from  big- 
ger, finer  things.  Yet  it  is  not  the  willing- 
ness to  do  "  hack-work "  and  to  do  it 
cheerfully  and  thoroughly,  when  the  oc- 
casion demands,  that  proves  we  lack  the 
Inborn  Talent  —  it  Is  the  failure  to  dis- 
tinguish   between   what    is    "  hack-work  '* 

[37] 


THE  INBORN  TALENT 

and  what  Is  not;  the  spirit  of  indifference 
which  looks  upon  all  kinds  of  writing  in- 
discriminately as  a  marketable  produce, 
that  degrades  authorship  from  a  profes- 
sion to  a  trade. 

Or  again,  what  has  been  your  prepara- 
tion, up  to  the  time  when  you  send  off 
your  first  essay  or  poem  or  story,  stamps 
enclosed,  to  take  Its  chances  with  some 
editor?  Does  your  real  apprenticeship 
begin  now  with  Its  toll  of  disappointments 
and  delays;  manuscripts  that  grow  soiled 
and  shabby  and  one  by  one  are  consigned 
to  the  waste-basket?  Or  have  you  been 
unconsciously  apprenticed  to  literature 
from  early  childhood,  surrounded  by  an 
atmosphere  of  books,  absorbing,  because 
you  could  not  help  it,  correct  Ideas  of  form 
and  technique  from  the  daily  conversation 
around  you?  Are  you  still  In  the  first  en- 
thusiasm of  youth  with  your  views  of  life 
still    mainly    rose-coloured    dreams?     Or 

C38] 


THE  INBORN  TALENT 

have  you  spent  the  first  thirty  or  forty 
years  of  your  life  face  to  face  with  hard 
realities,  in  the  activities  of  business  or  of 
travel  and  adventure  —  as  a  soldier  of 
fortune  rather  than  man  of  letters  ?  It  does 
not  follow  that  in  the  one  case  you  have* 
the  inborn  literary  instinct  and  that  in  the 
other  you  have  not.  Ruskin  at  the  age  of 
five  had  already  entered  upon  his  appren- 
ticeship. Before  he  had  learned  to  write, 
he  had  taught  himself  a  makeshift  method 
of  vertical  printing  with  a  pencil,  and  had 
undertaken  a  story  in  three-volume  form, 
the  name  of  which  escapes  the  memory, 
and  really  does  not  matter.  The  sig- 
nificant thing  about  it  is  that  this  preco- 
cious child  of  five  was  already  so  saturated 
with  the  atmosphere  of  books,  so  familiar 
with  their  form  and  make-up,  that  with 
the  imitative  fidelity  of  his  age,  he  added 
to  his  own  work  a  carefully  compiled  page 
of  errata.     Sir  Walter  Besant,  after  hav- 

[39] 


THE  INBORN  TALENT 

ing  endured  a  six  years'  exile,  occupying  a 
Colonial  Professorship  on  the  island  of 
Mauritius,  records  upon  his  return,  "I  be- 
gan life  again  at  the  age  of  thirty-one ;  my 
capital  was  a  pretty  extensive  knowledge 
acquired  by  voracious  and  indiscriminate 
reading." 

Mr.  Morgan  Robertson,  the  writer  of 
sea  stories,  is  a  conspicuous  example  of  a 
man  who  for  years  had  lived  apart  from 
books,  one  decade  before  the  mast,  and 
another  as  an  expert  diamond  setter  and 
then  suddenly  surprised  himself  by  reveal- 
ing the  Inborn  Talent.  But  his  is  an  ex- 
ceptional case.  There  are  a  good  many 
men  whose  love  of  adventure  has  given 
them  a  rich  variety  of  experience,  whose 
early  life  has  been  spent  in  the  danger- 
places  of  the  world.  They  are  apt  to 
think  that  they  possess  the  gift  because 
they  have  the  material  —  and  yet  these 
two   things   have    practically   nothing   in 

[40] 


THE  INBORN  TALENT 

common.  It  is  not  the  material  but 
the  instinct  to  use  it  in  the  right  way 
that  makes  the  Inborn  Talent.  It  is  quite 
a  common  experience  to  have  men  come 
for  advice  who  have  spent  years  in  queer, 
out-of-the-way  corners  of  the  earth  and 
have  had  adventures  rich  in  thrills  and 
shudders,  such  as  would  make  Robinson 
Crusoe  or  Treasure  Island  sound  a  little 
tame;  and  almost  invariably  what  they  say 
is  this:  "We  have  the  material.  Teach 
us  the  technique !  "  Yet  in  the  majority  of 
cases  even  a  knowledge  of  technique  would 
probably  not  make  stories  that  they  would 
write  sound  otherwise  than  commonplace. 
For  it  is  one  of  the  commonest  things  in  the 
world  to  find  that  men  can  live  adventur- 
ous lives  without  being  really  aware  of  it 
in  a  big  dramatic  sense  —  that  they  can 
pass  through  places  of  great  danger, 
inimitable  strangeness,  matchless  beauty; 
and  yet  when  they  come  to  write  them 

[41] 


THE  INBORN  TALENT 

down,  they  might  just  as  well  be  describing 
adventures  in  their  own  back  yard. 

The  Inborn  Talent,  then,  is  something 
distinct  from  thfe  material  of  our  experience 
and  the  technical  use  we  make  of  that  ma- 
terial. Just  what  it  is  proves  rather  baf- 
fling to  define.  But  at  least  it  includes  sev- 
eral different  elements:  First,  the  art  of 
really  seeing  —  the  artist's  eye,  which 
looks  through  and  beyond  the  mere  out- 
ward material  aspect  and  sees  the  vision 
of  some  great,  unpainted  picture.  Sec- 
ondly, a  fine  instinct  for  the  value  of  words 
—  a  gift  that  is  something  quite  different 
from  mere  richness  of  vocabulary  on  the 
one  hand,  and  the  possession  of  style,  on  the 
other.  Vocabulary  may  be  increased  at 
will  by  patiently  memorising  a  dictionary; 
and  style  is  a  matter  of  cadence  and  sound 
sequence  —  it  is  quite  possible  to  write 
rather  sad  trash  in  an  impeccable  style. 
But  a  sense  of  the  value  of  words,  an  in- 

[42] 


THE  INBORN  TALENT 

stinct  for  finding,  within  the  limits  of  our 
spoken  language,  the  precise  word  and 
phrase  that  will  as  nearly  as  possible  convey 
a  thought  that  is  perhaps  bigger  or  subtler 
than  any  spoken  words  —  this  indeed 
stamps  the  possessor  as  having  the  In- 
born Talent.  And  lastly,  it  includes  the 
possession  of  ideas,  as  distinct  from  knowl- 
edge. You  may  know  a  vast  number  of 
useful  facts,  such  as  that  a  straight  line  is 
the  shortest  distance  between  two  points  — 
but  such  knowledge  no  more  constitutes  the 
Inborn  Talent  than  such  a  definition  con- 
stitutes literature.  But  ideas,  big,  vital 
ideas,  of  the  compelling  sort  that  force 
themselves  into  written  words,  in  the  face 
of  obstacles  and  disappointments  and  the 
inertia  of  public  indifference,  are  the  very 
essence  of  the  creative  spirit,  the  golden 
hallmark  of  the  Inborn  Talent. 


[43] 


II 

THE  POWER  OF  SELF-CRITICISM 


CHAPTER  II 

THE   POWER  OF   SELF-CRITICISM 

Let  us  assume,  from  this  point  onward, 
that  any  would-be  writer,  whose  eye  hap- 
pens to  fall  upon  these  pages,  possesses  in 
some  degree  that  quality  which  is  inborn 
and  not  made  —  the  potential  force  of  au- 
thorship. The  next  all-important  ques- 
tion is,  how  is  this  inborn  talent  to  be  best 
developed?  What  is  the  first  faculty  for 
a  young  author  to  cultivate  ?  The  answer 
may  be  given  with  emphatic  assurance: 
TThe  faculty  of  self-criticism.  Yet  a  good 
many  teachers  will  answer  differently;  they 
will  tell  you  that  in  writing,  as  in  every- 
thing else  that  is  worth  doing  well,  the 
one  indispensable  factor  is  perseverance, 
industry,  the  tenacity  that  sticks  to  a  task 

[47] 


THE  POWER  OF  SELF-CRITICISM 

until  that  task  is  mastered.  In  a  certain 
sense  the  teachers  who  say  this  are  right. 
There  is  just  one  way  of  learning  to  do  a 
thing,  and  that  is  by  doing  it  —  doing  it 
over  and  over,  until  the  trick  of  it  is  mas- 
tered —  and  this  holds  just  as  true  of  the 
trick  of  constructing  a  short  story  as  of 
that  of  kneading  bread.  But  all  the  in- 
dustry in  the  world  will  not  take  you  far  if 
it  is  misdirected.  No  amount  of  wasted 
flour  and  wasted  energy  will  make  a  baker 
of  you,  if  you  cannot  tell  good  bread  from 
bad  —  and  no  amount  of  straining  thought 
and  patient  twisting  and  untwisting  of  the 
threads  of  a  plot  will  make  a  good  short 
story  if  you  do  not  know  the  right  twist 
from  the  wrong. 

For  this  reason,  a  young  author  who 
has  developed  the  power  of  self-criticism 
enjoys  a  distinct  advantage.  He  has 
within  him  the  ability  to  help  himself  as  no 
one  else  can  help  him.     Others  may  tell 

[  48  ] 


THE  POWER  OF  SELF-CRITICISM 

him  whether  his  work  Is  good  or  bad ;  but 
only  the  author  himself  Is  in  a  position  to 
know  just  what  he  was  trying  to  do  and 
how  far  short  he  has  fallen  of  doing  it.  It 
Is  easy  for  a  critic  of  broad  sympathies  and 
keen  discernment  to  point  out  a  writer's 
faults  and  to  show  how  a  specific  piece  of 
bad  writing  may  be  worked  over  and  im- 
proved. But  in  a  big,  general  way  It  may 
be  said  boldly  that  no  one  can  teach  a 
writer  how  to  remedy  his  faults,  no  one 
can  provide  a  golden  rule  for  his  future 
avoidance  of  them.  Suppose,  for  Instance, 
that  an  author's  trouble  is  In  plot  construc- 
tion. It  may  be  easy  to  tell  him  where  his 
plot  IS  wrong  and  explain  to  him  the  prin- 
ciple that  he  has  violated.  But  If  he  Is 
to  obtain  any  real  and  lasting  profit  he 
must  find  out  for  himself  how  to  set  the 
trouble  right.  Of  course,  you  might  con- 
struct the  plot  for  him  —  but  then  It  would 
be  your  plot  and  not  his ;  you  would  be,  not 
[49] 


THE  POWER  OF  SELF-CRITICISM 

his  teacher,  but  his  collaborator;  and  his 
working  out  of  your  plot  would  almost 
surely  result  in  bad  work.  Or  suppose 
again  that  his  fault  is  one  of  style.  You 
may  point  out  that  his  prose  lacks  rhythm, 
that  his  language  is  pompous,  or  high-col- 
oured, or  vulgar.  You  may  remedy  spe- 
cific paragraphs  with  a  rigorous  blue  pencil; 
but  the  writer  must  learn  for  himself  how 
to  acquire  an  ear  for  rhythm  or  a  sense  of 
good  taste  in  word  and  phrase. 

Unfortunately  the  power  to  judge  one's 
own  work  with  the  detachment  and  impar- 
tiality of  an  outsider  is  so  rare  a  quality 
that  we  may  seriously  question  whether  any 
author  ever  acquires  it  in  an  absolute  sense. 
Many  writers  of  distinction  have  been  to 
the  end  of  their  lives  notoriously  unable 
to  discriminate  l^etween  their  good  work 
and  their  bad.  Wordsworth  is  a  flagrant 
case  in  point.*     Mark  Twain,  in  our  own 

♦Walter  Pater,  in  Appreciations,  says:    "Nowhere 

[50] 


THE  POWER  OF  SELF-CRITICISM 

generation,  is  another  —  or  else  the  genius 
that  produced  Tom  Sawyer  and  Innocents 
Abroad  would  never  have  allowed  such 
sorry  stuff  as  Adaw/s  Diary  to  don  the  dig- 
nity of  print.  Other  writers,  even  some  of 
the  greatest,  can  get  the  proper  outside 
perspective  of  their  work  only  by  some  sys- 
tematic method,  some  mechanical  device. 
Balzac,  for  instance,  needed  the  imperson- 
ality of  the  printed  page  before  he  could 
judge  the  value  of  his  writings  or  do  any 
effective  revision;  it  was  only  through  re- 
is  there  so  perplexed  a  mixture  as  in  Wordsworth's 
own  poetry,  of  work  touched  with  intense  and  indi- 
vidual power,  with  work  of  almost  no  character  at  all. 
...  Of  all  poets  equally  great  he  \^ould  gain 
most  by  a  skilfully  made  anthology."  And  similarly 
Lowell,  in  his  essay  entitled  "  Shakespeare  Once 
More:" 

"  His  (Wordsworth's)  poems  are  Egyptian  sand- 
wastes,  with  here  and  there  an  oasis  of  exquisite 
greenery,  a  grand  image  Sphynx-Hke,  half  burled  in 
drifting  commonplaces,  or  a  solitary  pillar  of  some 
towering  thought." 

[51] 


THE  POWER  OF  SELF-CRITICISM 

peated  sets  of  proof  sheets  that  much  of 
his  work  slowly  grew  into  final  shape.* 

Now  this  vital  power  of  self-criticism, 
which  even  great  writers  have,  many  of 
them,  developed  slowly  and  painfully,  is 
at  best  rudimentary  in  the  average  begin- 
ner. Every  writer,  whether  he  will  or  not, 
puts  a  good  deal  of  himself  into  his  work; 
and  every  amateur  writer  is  inordinately 
pleased  with  that  part  of  his  work  which 
he  feels  to  be  distinctive,  that  quality  which 
stamps  It  as  his  own.  It  may  bristle  with 
mannerisms,  as  a  hedgehog  bristles  with 
spines  —  nevertheless  it  is  the  part  dearest 
to  him,  the  part  that  he  is  slowest  to  recog- 
nise as  wrong.  He  cannot  see  himself  as 
others  see  him.  How  is  this  rudimentary 
sense  to  be  developed?  First  of  all,  it 
would  seem,  by  learning  to  criticise  others. 
Writing  in  this  respect  does  not  differ  from 

*  See  page  163. 

[52] 


THE  POWER  OF  SELF-CRITICISM 

shoeing  a  horse  or  making  a  pair  of  trou- 
sers. If  you  have  not  learned  to  judge 
whether  a  horse  is  well  shod  or  a  pair  of 
trousers  well  cut,  then  you  may  go  through 
life  without  knowing  the  quality  of  your 
own  work  as  blacksmith  or  tailor.  What 
you  must  do  is  to  go  to  blacksmiths  and  to 
tailors  of  recognised  skill  and  patiently 
study  their  methods  and  their  results  until 
you  make  yourself  an  expert  on  these  sub- 
jects— 'perhaps,  even,  until  you  discover 
ways  in  which  their  work  may  be  improved. 
And  the  same  rule  holds  good,  If  instead 
of  horseshoes  and  trousers  you  wish  to  learn 
the  craftsmanship  of  essay  and  sonnet. 

Now,  it  IS  far  easier  to  say.  Learn  to 
criticise  others,  than  it  is  to  tell  how  to 
go  to  work  to  learn.  But  the  first  and 
weightiest  rule  Is  this:  begin  by  reading 
the  best  models  in  whatever  line  of  work 
you  are  desirous  of  taking  up.     Go  to  the 

[53] 


THE  POWER  OF  SELF-CRITICISM 

fountain-head,  read  the  books  themselves, 
don't  read  what  someone  else  has  written 
about  them  —  or  if  you  do,  at  least  make 
such  reading  a  secondary  matter.  If  your 
chosen  field  Is  the  short  story,  spend  your 
time  In  reading  the  recognised  masterpieces 
of  Poe  and  Maupassant,  Kipling  and  O. 
Henry,  In  preference  to  the  best  text-book 
ever  written  on  short-story  structure.  If 
your  life  work  Is  lyric  poetry,  then  by  all 
means  read  lyrics,  memorise  lyrics,  the  best 
you  can  find  and  the  more  the  better.  You 
may  get  some  help  from  critical  studies, 
but  you  will  get  vastly  more  from  the 
knowledge  which  you  slowly  and  labori- 
ously dig  out  for  yourself.  When  some- 
one once  wrote  to  Matthew  Arnold  on  be- 
half of  a  young  woman  who  thought  that 
she  possessed  the  poetic  gift  and  wished  to 
know  If  there  was  such  a  thing  as  a  dic- 
tionary of  rhymes,  he  replied :  "  There  is 
a  Rhyming  Dictionary  and  there  Is  a  book 
[54] 


THE  POWER  OF  SELF-CRITICISM 

called  a  Guide  to  English  Verse  Compo- 
sition* But  all  this  IS  sad  lumber,  and  the 
young  lady  had  much  better  content  herself 
with  imitating  the  metres  she  finds  most 
attract  her  in  the  poetry  she  reads.  No- 
body, I  imagine,  ever  began  to  good  pur- 
pose in  any  other  way.'*  '^ 

It  is  rather  surprising  and  extremely 
suggestive  to  find  how  many  of  the  world's 
great  writers  were  insatiable  and  omnivo- 
rous readers  in  early  youth.  Pope  records 
that  as  a  boy  "  I  took  to  reading  by  myself, 
for  which  I  had  a  very  great  eagerness  and 
enthusiasm.  ...  I  followed  every- 
where as  my  fancy  led  me,  and  was  like 
a  boy  gathering  flowers  in  the  fields  and 
woods  just  as  they  fell  his  way."  Moore, 
in  his  Life  of  Byron,  gives  a  list  which  the 
author  of  Childe  Harold  jotted  down  from 
memory,  of  books  read  before  he  was 
twenty  *  —  a  list  so  varied  and  extensive 

*  In  the  list  referred  to,  the  books  are  grouped  under 


THE  POWER  OF  SELF-CRITICISM 

as  to  make  many  a  mature  man  of  letters 
of  his  day  feel  sadly  delinquent.  George 
Eliot,  at  about  the  same  age,  writes  to  a 
friend  as  follows:  "My  mind  is  an  as- 
semblage of  disjointed  specimens  of  his- 
tory, ancient  and  modern,  scraps  of  poetry 
picked  up  from  Shakespeare,  Cowper, 
Wordsworth  and  Milton;  newspaper  top- 
ics; morsels  of  Addison  and  Bacon,  Latin 
verbs,  geometry,  entomology  and  chemis- 
try; reviews  and  metaphysics.''  Theophile 
Gautier  is  perhaps,  the  most  extreme  in- 

the  headings,  History,  Biography,  Law,  Philosophy, 
Geography,  Poetry,  Eloquence,  Divinity,  and  Miscel- 
laneous, concluding  with  the  following  paragraph: 
"All  the  books  here  enumerated  I  have  taken  down 
from  memory.  I  recollect  reading  them  and  can 
quote  passages  from  any  mentioned.  I  have,  of 
course,  omitted  several  in  my  catalogue,  but  the  greater 
part  of  the  above  I  perused  before  the  age  of  fifteen. 
...  I  have  also  read  (to  my  regret  at  present) 
about  four  thousand  novels,  including  the  works  of 
Cervantes,  Fielding,  Smollett,  Richardson,  Mackenzie, 
Sterne,  Rabelais,  Rousseau,  etc." 

[56] 


THE  POWER  OF  SELF-CRITICISM 

stance  that  can  be  cited.  He  learned  to 
read  at  the  age  of  five.  "  And  since  that 
time,"  he  adds,  "  I  may  say,  like  Apelles, 
Nulla  dies  sine  linea.''  And  his  biogra- 
pher, Maxime  du  Camp,  says  further; 

This  IS  literally  true;  I  do  not  think  there, 
ever  existed  a  more  indefatigable  reader  than 
Gautier.  Any  book  was  good  enough  to  satisfy 
this  tyrannical  taste,  that  at  times  seemed  to 
degenerate  into  a  mania.  .  .  •  He  took 
pleasure  in  the  most  mediocre  novels,  equally 
with  books  of  high  philosophic  conceptions,  and 
with  works  of  pure  science.  He  was  devoured 
with  the  thirst  for  learning,  and  he  used  to  say, 
"  There  is  no  conception  so  poor,  no  trash  so  de- 
testable, that  it  does  not  teach  something  from 
which  one  may  profit."  He  would  read  diction- 
aries, grammars,  prospectuses,  cook-books,  alman- 
acs. ...  He  had  no  sort  of  system  about 
his  reading;  whatever  book  came  under  his  hand 
he  would  open  with  a  sort  of  mechanical  move- 
ment, nor  lay  it  down  again  until  he  had  turned 
the  closing  page. 

[57] 


THE  POWER  OF  SELF-CRITICISM 

Now  there  may  be  some  disadvantages 
in  this  sort  of  voracious  and  undisciplined 
reading,  In  which  many  a  famous  author 
has  confessedly  indulged.  But  at  least  it 
tends  toward  forming  an  independent  taste 
and  avoiding  the  slavish  echoing  of  cut- 
and-dried  academic  judgments.  In  an  es- 
say entitled  "  Is  it  Possible  to  Tell  a  Good 
Book  from  a  Bad  One?"  Mr.  Augustine 
Birrell  remarks  pertinently:  "To  admire 
by  tradition  is  a  poor  thing.  Far  better 
really  to  admire  Miss  Gabblegoose's  nov- 
els than  to  pretend  to  admire  Miss  Aus- 
ten's." There  is  nothing  so  deadening  to 
the  critical  faculty  as  the  blind  acceptance 
of  text-book  and  encyclopedic  verdicts. 
No  critical  estimate  of  any  author,  living 
or  dead,  is  ever  quite  final.  As  Anatole 
France  is  fond  of  reminding  us,  even 
Homeri  has  not  been  admired  for  precisely 
the  same  reasons  during  any  two  consecu- 
tive centuries.     "  The  works  that  everyone 

[58] 


THE  POWER  OF  SELF-CRITICISM 

admires  are  those  that  no  one  examines. 
We  receive  them  as  a  precious  burden, 
which  we  pass  on  to  others  without  having 
looked  at  them."  And  in  much  the  same 
vein,  Dr.  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  once 
wrote:  "  Nothing  is  interesting  to  all  the 
world.  An  author  who  is  spoken  of  as 
universally  admired  will  find,  if  he  is  fool- 
ish enough  to  inquire,  that  there  are  not 
wanting  intelligent  persons  who  are  indif- 
ferent to  him,  nor  yet  those  who  have  a 
special  emphatic  dislike  to  him."  Unless 
you  are  devoid  of  literary  taste,  you  must 
find  pleasure  in  a  certain  number  of  the 
recognised  masters;  but  you  are  under  no 
obligation  to  admire  them  all.*  The  abil- 
ity to  give  an  intelligent  reason'  for  differ- 
ing from  the  accepted  estimate  of  Milton, 

♦This  is  practically  the  thought  of  Thoreau,  when 
he  wrote:  "  If  the  writers  of  the  brazen  age  are  most 
suggestive  to  thee,  confine  thyself  to  them  and  leave 
those  of  the  Augustan  age  to  dust  and  the  bookworm." 

[59] 


THE  POWER  OF  SELF-CRITICISM 

or  Fielding,  or  Dickens,  is  not  a  bad  test 
of  the  possession  of  the  critical  gift.  "  A 
man,"  says  George  Eliot,  "who  dares  to 
say  that  he  finds  an  eminent  classic  feeble 
here,  extravagant  there,  and  in  general 
overrated,  may  chance  to  give  an  opinion 
which  has  some  genuine  discrimination  in 
it  concerning  a  new  worker  or  a  living 
thinker." 

As  a  basis,  then,  for  forming  a  sound 
critical  estimate  of  books,  one  needs :  first, 
a  broad  acquaintance  with  the  best  authors, 
the  wider  and  more  catholic  the  better; 
secondly,  an  open  and  independent  mind. 
If,  beyond  this,  your  taste  happens  to  run 
to  a  serious  study  of  criticism,  its  history, 
Its  methods,  its  controversies,  all  this  will 
tend  to  strengthen  your  self-confidence  and 
sureness  of  touch.  Yet,  for  the  purpose  of 
craftsmanship,  the  principles  on  which  to 
judge  a  book  are  few  and  simple.  You 
are  not  required  to  dogmatise  about  the  ul- 

[60] 


THE  POWER  OF  SELF-CRITICISM 

timate  value,  In  the  universal  scheme  of 
things,  of  the  newest  novel  or  the  youngest 
verse.  As  a  craftsman  you  are  interested 
primarily  in  its  possible  present  value  to 
you.  Accordingly,  there  is  just  one  way 
in  which  to  judge  the  books  you  read,  the 
new  books  equally  with  the  old:  and  that 
is,  to  ask  yourself  what  was  the  author's 
underlying  purpose,  what  special  means 
he  took  to  accomplish  it,  and  whether  or 
not  he  attained  his  goal.  The  further 
question,  whether  the  thing  was  worth  do- 
ing at  all,  concerns  the  craftsman  only  in- 
directly—  just  as  the  question  whether  a 
cube  and  cone  and  pyramid  are  worth  re- 
producing in  black  and  white  need  never 
trouble  the  art  student.  If  his  purpose  is 
to  draw  a  cube  or  a  cone,  then  his  one  con- 
cern is  to  find  out  how  to  do  it  in  the  best 
possible  way.  The  moral  or  ethical  value 
of  a  painting  or  a  book  Is  not  a'  part  of  the 
craftsmanship  of  art  or  of  literature.  The 
[6i] 


THE  POWER  OF  SELF-CRITICISM 

one  paramount  question  is  always :  What 
did  the  author  try  to  do,  and  how  near  did 
he  come  to  doing  it?  This  form  of  criti- 
cism, which  seeks  to  classify  books  accord- 
ing to  the  author^s  purpose,  is  very  nearly 
what  Mr.  Howells  had  in  mind  when  he 
wrote : 

It  is  hard  for  the  critic  to  understand  that  it  is 
really  his  business  to  classify  and  analyse  the 
fruits  of  the  human  mind  very  much  as  the  nat- 
uralist classifies  the  objects  of  his  study,  rather 
than  to  praise  or  blame  them;  that  there  is  a 
measure  of  the  same  absurdity  In  his  trampling 
on  a  poem,  a  novel  or  an  essay  that  does  not  please 
him  as  in  a  botanist  grinding  a  plant  underfoot 
because  he  does  not  find  it  pretty.  He  does  not 
conceive  that  it  is  his  business  rather  to  identify 
the  species,  and  then  explain  how  and  where  the 
species  Is  Imperfect  and  irregular. 

It  has  already  been  said  that  the  young 
writer   can   get   comparatively   small   aid 

[62] 


THE  POWER  OF  SELF-CRITICISM 

from  volumes  of  criticism  and  mono- 
graphs on  how  to  write ;  that  he  should  go 
to  the  authors  who  have  produced  litera- 
ture rather  than  to  those  who  tell  others 
how  to  produce  it.  There  is,  however,  one 
class  of  critical  essay,  the  importance  of 
which,  to  the  young  writer,  can  hardly  be 
overrated;  and  that  is  the  criticism  written 
by  men  who  have  proved  themselves  mas- 
ters of  the  art  they  criticise.  I  have  in 
mind  such  essays  as  that  of  Poe,  in  which 
he  analyses  the  structure  of  The  Raven; 
Maupassant's  introduction  to  Pierre  et 
Jean;  and  Valdes's  introduction  to  La  Her- 
mana  San  Sulpicio;  Trollope's  chapter  on 
the  novel  in  his  Autobiography;  and  in 
general  the  various  critical  writings  of 
Zola  and  Anatole  France,  Henry  James 
and  William  Dean  Howells  —  the  list 
could  be  amplified  at  pleasure  —  in  which 
they  allow  themselves  to  theorise  freely 
about  their  conception  of  the  art  they  prac- 

[63] 


THE  POWER  OF  SELF-CRITICISM 

tise  and  the  methods  by  which  they  strlv'e 
to  produce  their  results.  Every  page  of 
such  criticism  is  in  the  nature  of  a  crafts^ 
man's  confessions  —  they  are  full  of  price- 
less illumination. 

Yet  It  cannot  be  too  strongly  insisted 
that,  In  writing  far  more  than  in  painting, 
there  Is  a  great  deal  that  cannot  be  taught 
and  that  you  must  think  out  for  yourself. 
One  reason,  undoubtedly,  is  that  the  crafts- 
manship of  letters  is  more  elastic  than  that 
of  the  other  arts  —  there  Is  scope  for  a 
greater  freedom  and  originality.  Henry 
James,  In  The  Art  of  Fiction,  shrewdly 
says:  "The  painter  is  able  to  teach  the 
rudiments  of  his  practice,  and  it  Is  possible, 
from  the  study  of  good  work  (granted  the 
aptitude)  both  to  learn  how  to  paint  and 
to  learn  how  to  write.  Yet  .  .  .  the 
literary  artist  would  be  obliged  to  say  to 
his  pupil  much  more  than  the  other,  *  Oh, 
well,  you  must  do  It  as  you  can.'  "    Again, 

[643 


THE  POWER  OF  SELF-CRITICISM 

there  are  some  things  which  an  author  can- 
not teach  because  he  does  not  quite  know 
how  or  why  he  did  a  certain  thing.  Often- 
times a  novelist  achieves  some  of  his  hap- 
piest results  unconsciously,*  and  by  sheer  in- 
stinct; and  then,  again,  a  carefully  planned 
chapter  or  in  some  cases  an  entire  vol- 
ume fails  of  its  effect,  and  the  reason  of  the 
failure  eludes  him.f     These  are  the  sort 

♦Thackeray,  in  Vanity  Fair,  writing  the  chapter  de- 
scribing how  Rawdon  Crawley,  released  from  the 
sponging  house,  returns  to  his  home  to  find  Lord 
Steyne  in  Becky's  company  and  hurls  the  noble  black- 
guard to  the  ground,  gives  the  final  touch  with 
"Becky  admired  her  husband,  strong,  brave  and  vic- 
torious." After  he  had  written  these  words  the  novel- 
ist dropped  his  pen  and  brought  his  fist  down  on  the 
table.    "By  God!  That's  a  stroke  of  genius!" 

t  Mr.  Henry  James's  own  confessions  regarding  The 
Aivkivard  Age,  contained  in  the  preface  to  the  "  New 
York  Edition,"  seems  very  much  to  the  point:  "That 
I  did,  positively  and  seriously  —  ah,  so  seriously !  — 
emulate  the  levity  of  Gyp  and  by  the  same  token,  of 
that  hardiest  of  flowers  fostered  in  her  school,  M. 
Henri  Lavedan,  is  a  contribution  to  the  history  of  The 


THE  POWER  OF  SELF-CRITICISM 

of  questions  which  a  young  writer  should 
have  constantly  before  him,  in  all  his  read- 
ing :  Why  is  a  certain  chapter  tedious  and 
a  certain  other  chapter  tingling  with  an 
almost  painful  suspense  ?  And  did  the  au- 
thor mean  to  achieve  these  results,  or  has 
he  simply  failed  in  what  he  tried  to  do? 
Take,  for  example,  two  passages  from  Kip- 

Aivkivard  Age  that  I  shall  obviously  have  had  to 
brace  myself  In  order  to  make.  .  .  .  My  private 
inspiration  had  been  in  the  Gyp  plan  (artfully  dis- 
simulated, for  dear  life,  and  applied  with  the  very 
subtlest  consistency,  but  none  the  less  kept  in  secret 
view) ;  yet  I  was  to  fail  to  make  out  in  the  event  that 
the  book  succeeded  in  producing  the  impression  of  any 
plan  on  any  person.  No  hint  of  that  sort  of  success, 
or  of  any  critical  perception  at  all  in  relation  to  the 
business,  has  ever  come  my  way.  ...  I  had 
meanwhile  been  absent  in  England,  and  it  was  not 
until  my  return,  some  time  later,  that  I  had  from  my 
publisher  any  news  of  our  venture.  But  the  news 
then  met  at  a  stroke  all  my  curiosity:  *I  am  sorry  to 
say  the  book  has  done  nothing-  to  speak  of ;  I've  never 
in  all  my  experience  seen  one  treated  with  more  gen' 
eral  and  complete  disrespect.' " 

[66] 


THE  POWER  OF  SELF-CRITICISM 

ling;  not  perhaps  the  best  we  might  find 
for  the  purpose,  but  at  least  they  are  to  the 
point  —  the  one  conveying  the  sense  of 
dragging,  monotonous  hours,  the  other 
that  of  tremendous  speed,  the  conquest  of 
time  and  space.  On  the  one  hand  we  have 
in  The  Light  that  Failed  the  unforgettable 
picture  of  Dick  sitting,  day  after  day,  in 
his  unending  darkness,  dumbly  turning  over 
Maisie's  letters,  which  he  is  never  to  read; 
on  the  other,  in  Captains  Courageous,  we 
see  Harvey  Cheyne's  father  speeding  across 
the  breadth  of  the  American  continent, 
goaded  by  an  intolerable  impatience  to 
reach  the  son,  whom  by  a  miracle  the  waves 
have  given  back  to  him.  Now,  the  first 
case  is  flawless.  The  second,  much  praised 
and  often  quoted,  is  off  the  key.  That 
private  car  of  the  elder  Cheyne,  "  hum- 
ming like  a  giant  bee  ''  across  mountain  and 
prairie,  by  the  very  sense  of  motion  it  con- 
veys, robs  us  of  a  true  perception  of  the 

[67] 


THE  POWER  OF  SELF-CRITICISM 

way  in  which  time  seems  to  drag  to  the  im- 
patient man  within  it. 

But  above  all,  in  your  reading,  do  not 
be  content  with  studying  the  so-called 
masterpieces  of  literature.  It  is  wise  to 
know  the  Decameron  and  Don  Quixote^ 
Richardson,  and  Smollett,  and  Sterne; 
but  the  modern  writer  can  no  more  de- 
pen  Jupon  them  as  models  than  the  modern 
painter  can  depend  upon  Botticelli  and 
Ghirlandajo.  A  knowledge  of  Elisa- 
bethan  footgear,  or  of  the  relative  artistic 
value  of  the  moccasin  and  the  sabot,  is  of 
little  value  to  a  modern  shoemaker.  What 
he  wants  to  know  is  how  shoes,  the  best 
sort  of  shoes,  are  made  to-day,  by  the  lat- 
est methods.  And  it  is  precisely  the  same 
with  literature.  There  is  no  demand  to- 
day for  a  new  Hamlet,  a  second  Paradise 
Lost,  another  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley,  or 
even  a  Tom  Jones,  David  Copperfield  or 
Vanity  Fair,  The  technique  of  writing  is 
[68] 


THE  POWER  OF  SELF-CRITICISM 

constantly  in  a  state  of  transition;  and 
however  much  we  may  delight  in  the  meth- 
ods of  a  generation  or  a  century  ago,  we 
do  not  tolerate  them  at  the  hands  of  mod- 
ern writers.  Take  for  instance  the  modern 
novel ;  its  form  and  structure  —  one  might 
almost  say  its  spirit,  too  —  have  been  rad- 
ically changed  from  that  of  Thackeray 
and  Dickens.  And  it  does  not  help  us 
nearly  so  much,  as  writers,  to  know  which 
of  the  two  is  the  greater  novelist,  as  to 
understand  in  what  respects  Henry  James 
and  Maupassant  are  better  craftsmen  than 
either  of  them.  Professor  Woodberry,  in 
The  Appreciation  of  Literature,  insists 
that,  even  for  the  general  reader,  "the 
serious  study  of  one's  own  literature  is 
most  fruitfully  begun  by  acquaintance  with 
those  authors  who  are  in  vogue  and  nearly 
contemporary."  In  the  case  of  the  would- 
be  writer  it  is  not  merely  most  fruitful, 
but  absolutely  imperative,  to  keep  abreast 

C  69  ] 


THE  POWER  OF  SELF-CRITICISM 

of  the  best  contemporary  work  that  is  done 
in  the  field  of  his  own  labours.  And  by 
**  best  work "  I  do  not  mean  only  such 
books  as  seem  likely  to  stand  the  test  of 
time,  books  that  are  unmistakably  big  in 
theme,  in  purpose  and  in  technical  skill: 
contemporary  works  of  this  class  are  so 
few  that  the  apprentice's  lesson  would  be 
soon  ended.  No,  I  go  much  further  than 
that  and  include  all  the  new  books  which  ex- 
hibit even  in  some  single  direction,  an  en- 
couraging tendency,  the  evidence  of  some 
problem  faced  and  solved,  some  interest- 
ing innovation  attempted.  Above  all,  in 
your  reading,  avoid  that  narrow  provincial 
spirit  that  limits  your  range  to  the  works 
of  your  own  countrymen.  The  American 
writer  cannot  afford  to  ignore  what  is  be- 
ing done  in  his  own  field  by  Englishmen. 
And  if  he  has  the  time  and  the  gift  of 
languages  he  will  be  the  broader  and  bet- 
ter artist  for  keeping  abreast  of  the  best 

[70] 


THE  POWER  OF  SELF-CRITICISM 

thought  and  best  work  of  France  and  Ger- 
many and  Italy. 

And  in  all  your  studies  let  the  two  great 
essentials,  reading  and  writing,  go  hand  In 
hand.  Clarify  your  impressions  by  trans- 
ferring them  to  paper.  They  may  never 
be  of  value  to  anyone  else,  but  they  will 
be  of  inestimable  service  to  you,  as  mile- 
stones of  your  own  progress.  "  Of  late 
years,"  wrote  Trollope  at  the  close  of  his 
Autobiography,  "  I  have  found  my  greatest 
pleasure  in  our  old  English  dramatists,  not 
from  excessive  love  of  their  work,  but 
from  curiosity  in  searching  their  plots  and 
examining  their  character.  If  I  live  a  few 
years  longer,  I  shall,  I  think,  leave  in  my 
copies  of  these  dramatists,  down  to  the 
close  of  James  I.,  written  criticisms  on 
every  play."  In  Zola's  published  Lettres 
de  Jeunesse,  letters  written  between  the 
ages  of  twenty  and  twenty-two,  the  chief 
interest  centres  in  their  testimony  of  the 

[71] 


THE  POWER  OF  SELF-CRITICISM 

eagerness  with  which  he  devoured  books, 
the  earnestness  with  which  he  thought 
about  them,  and  the  enthusiasm  with  which 
he  poured  out  his  opinions  upon  paper. 
Through  those  rapid,  immature  and  often 
turgid  pages  one  sees  already  the  germs  of 
ideas  that  later  came  to  fruition,  the  ori- 
gin of  many  of  his  articles  of  literary  faith. 
And  not  so  far  removed  was  the  method 
by  which  an  author  of  widely  different 
quality  and  creed  learned  his  craftsman- 
ship. This  paragraph  from  Stevenson's 
letters,  though  often  quoted,  will  hurt  no 
one  to  read  once  again : 

All  through  my  boyhood  and  youth  I  was 
known  and  pointed  out  for  the  pattern  of  an  idler ; 
and  yet  I  was  always  busy  on  my  private  end, 
which  was  to  learn  to  write.  I  always  kept  two 
books  in  my  pocket,  one  to  read,  the  other  to 
write  in.  As  I  walked,  my  mind  was  busy  fitting 
what  I  saw  with  appropriate  words;  when  I  sat 
by  the  roadside,  I  would  either  read,  or  a  pencil 

[72] 


THE  POWER  OF  SELF-CRITICISM 

and  a  penny  version-book  would  be  in  my  hand, 
to  note  down  the  features  of  the  scene  or  com- 
memorate some  halting  stanzas.  .  .  .  And 
what  I  wrote  was  for  no  ulterior  use;  it  was 
written  consciously  for  practice.  ...  I  had 
vowed  that  I  would  learn  to  write.  That  was 
a  proficiency  that  tempted  me,  and  I  practiced, 
to  acquire  it,  as  a  man  learns  to  whittle,  in  a 
wager  with  myself. 

But  in  all  your  studies  of  other  writers, 
the  living  and  the  dead,  cultivate  independ- 
ence. Never  slavishly  imitate.  Take 
what  you  find  best  from  the  technique  of 
each  book  you  read  and  reject  the  rest. 
Notice  what  qualities  and  what  defects  the 
authors  you  read  have  in  common  and  what 
are  their  individual  sins  and  virtues.  In 
learning  your  lesson  from  them,  do  not 
be  afraid  of  independence,  so  long  as  you 
know  the  reason  why.  But  as  Miss  Ellen 
Terry  remarks  aptly,  in  her  volume  of  au- 
tobiography, before  you  are  allowed  to  be 

[73] 


THE  POWER  OF  SELF-CRITICISM 

eccentric  you  must  have  learned  where  the 
centre  is.  Mistrust  the  extravagant  indi- 
vidualism of  youth ;  realise  that  there  is  no 
virtue  in  being  different,  unless  the  dif- 
ference produces  some  deliberately  sought 
result.  To  come  down  from  your  apart- 
ment by  the  fire-escape  will  no  doubt  make 
you  conspicuous  —  but  there  is  really  no 
point  in  doing  so  unless  the  elevator  has 
stopped  running  and  the  stairs  ^  are  on 
fire.  In  writing  we  want  some  better  and 
more  logical  reason  for  eccentricity  than  a 
mere  peacock  vanity,  a  desire  to  attract  at- 
tention. Where  a  literary  form  is  well  es- 
tablished, do  your  share  in  maintaining  it, 
excepting  when  you  have  some  excellent 
reason  for  making  a  change.  The  chances 
are  that  in  doing  a  thing  differently  from 
the  established  formula  you  will  not  do  it 
half  so  well.  Only  a  madman  would  try 
to  write  a  sonnet  in  fifteen  lines,  just  for 
the  sake  of  being  different  from  others. 

[74] 


THE  POWER  OF  SELF-CRITICISM 

Yet  George  Meredith  made  use  of  a  six- 
teen-line  form  of  verse  In  his  Modern 
Love,  which  Is  often  loosely  spoken  of  as  a 
sonnet  sequence  —  and  he  was  justified  in 
doing  so  because  he  knew  exactly  why  he 
did  It.  The  poem  Is  not  merely  a  series  of 
separate  and  complete  thoughts,  connected 
by  a  single  thread,  like  pearls  strung  on  the 
same  string,  after  the  fashion  of  Shakes- 
peare's sonnets,  or  the  Sonnets  from  the 
Portuguese.  They  form  a  continuous 
piece  of  narrative,  and  for  that  reason  the 
extra  two  lines  help  the  forward  movement, 
where  the  formal  sestet  of  the  sonnet 
would  have  continually  broken  in  with  a 
misplaced  sense  of  finality.  Many  a  rule 
of  rhetoric  and  prosody  and  technique  may 
be  broken  —  provided  always  that  you 
have  a  reason  that  justifies  you.  The  early 
stories  of  Kipling  fairly  bristled  with 
strange  phrases,  words  forced  into  new 
partnerships,   and  what   Mr.    Gosse   has 

[75] 


THE  POWER  OF  SELF-CRITICISM 

called  "  the  noisy,  newspaper  bustle  of  his 
little  peremptory  sentences."  And  yet, 
more  often  than  not,  he  justified  himself, 
because  he  knew  so  well  what  he  was  about 
—  and  knew  also  that  he  was  succeeding  In 
expressing  his  thoughts  a  little  better  than 
they  could  have  been  expressed  In  any  other 
and  more  conventional  way.  So  remem- 
ber, in  writing,  to  be  Independent;  on  oc- 
casion be  even  boldly  innovative,  so  long 
as  you  can  be  so  intelligently. 


[76] 


Ill 

THE  AUTHOR'S  PURPOSE 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  author's  purpose 

At  the  moment  of  beginning  this  chapter, 
which  is  to  concern  itself  with  The  Au- 
thor's Purpose,  a  memory  comes  back,  very 
clear  and  distinct,  of  a  certain  Sunday 
many  years  ago,  and  of  a  rather  prim  old 
lady  who  had  been  to  hear  an  eccentric  and 
sensational  preacher,  and  who  came  away 
shaking  her  head  and  murmuring  in  scan- 
dalised wonderment :  "  Why,  he  didn't 
even  give  out  a  text!  "  Now,  whether 
the  preacher  really  had  dispensed  with  a 
text  or  whether  the  bewildered  old  lady 
had  simply  lost  sight  of  it  is  immaterial; 
what  does  matter  is  that  in  the  sermon  we 
have  at  least  one  type  of  composition  in 
which  there  is  a  clearly  understood  conven- 

[79] 


THE  AUTHOR'S  PURPOSE 

tion  that  the  writer's  purpose  shall  be  de- 
fined beyond  all  question,  and  at  the  very 
start.  In  other  literary  forms,  unfortu- 
nately, the  need  of  having  a  purpose  is  more 
easily  overlooked,  because  that  purpose  is 
more  or  less  disguised,  instead  of  being  em- 
bodied in  a  specified  chapter  and  verse. 
Yet,  the  mere  circumstance  that  the  poet 
and  the  novelist,  for  instance,  differ  from 
the  preacher  In  not  having  to  announce  In 
advance  the  theme  of  their  discourse  does 
not  alter  the  fact  that  "  Beauty  is  truth, 
truth  beauty,"  is  the  text  of  the  Ode  on  a 
Grecian  Urn,  and  that  Owen  Wister's  The 
Virginian  is  an  eloquent  attempt  to  recon- 
cile the  New  England  conscience  to  the 
rude  ethics  of  Western  justice. 

Now,  the  average  person  who  might  be 
very  quick  to  note  the  omission  of  a  Sunday 
morning  text  will  quite  complacently  read 
a  novel  or  a  short  story  that  does  not  pos- 
sess even  a  rudimentary  central  idea  with- 

[80] 


THE  AUTHOR'S  PURPOSE 

out  being  aware  that  there  is  anything 
wrong  with  it.  But  wait  until  someone 
happens  to  ask  such  a  reader  what  the  book 
he  chances  to  be  reading  Is  about.  If  the 
answer  is  crisp  and  concise  you  may  know 
without  reading  it  yourself  that  the  book 
has  something  In  it  that  Is  worth  while ;  if, 
on  the  contrary,  the  answer  comes  uncer- 
tainly and  long-drawn  out,  something  to 
the  effect  that  "It  is  about  a  man  and  a 
girl  and  they  are  talking  together  and  a 
lot  of  things  have  happened,"  and  so  on  In- 
definitely, you  may  be  pretty  sure  that  the 
book  has  no  central  idea  at  all. 

Now  the  one  way  of  bringing  home  to 
a  young  writer  the  necessity  of  having  a 
definite  purpose  is  to  make  him  form  the 
habit  of  literary  criticism  which  was  urged 
In  the  preceding  chapter.  After  we  have 
once  learned  to  ask  ourselves  regarding 
each  new  poem  or  essay  or  novel  that  comes 
our  way:  Did  the  author  know  what  he 
[8i] 


THE  AUTHOR'S  PURPOSE 

was  trying  to  do  and  has  he  succeeded  in 
doing  It?  —  then  we  are  in  a  position  to 
know  that  the  most  exasperating  of  all 
books  is  that  which  apparently  has  no  cen- 
tral idea,  no  definite  purpose  —  the  amor- 
phous, jelly-fish  type  of  book  that  can  no 
more  be  measured  by  a  definite  standard 
than  we  can  measure  a  puff  of  cigarette 
smoke.  And  almost  equally  hopeless  is  the 
book  in  which  the  author  has  confused  his 
purposes,  leaving  us  vaguely  guessing  be- 
tween several  solutions ;  or,  again,  the  book 
in  which  the  author*s  purpose  and  form  are 
hopelessly  out  of  proportion  —  either  a  lit- 
tle tupenny  purpose,  like  a  seed  pearl  bur- 
ied in  a  gypsy  setting;  or  else  a  great  big 
ethical  principle  squandered  on  a  triolet, 
like  a  Koh-i-noor  set  for  a  little  finger-ring. 
When  we  learn  to  recognise  what  bad  work- 
manship these  fundamental  faults  produce 
in  others,  then  we  are  prepared  to  lay  down 
the  following  rules  for  our  own  work :  that 

[82] 


THE  AUTHOR'S  PURPOSE 

we  will  always  begin  with  a  clearly  defined 
purpose,  single,  not  complex ;  that  this  pur- 
pose shall  receive  consistent  development 
from  the  first  line  of  our  work  to  the  last ; 
and  that  we  shall  strive  for  a  nicely  bal- 
anced relationship  between  our  central  pur- 
pose and  the  setting  we  have  chosen  for  it. 
It  IS  well,  however,  to  understand  at 
the  outset  just  what  we  mean  by  this 
term,  The  Author's  Purpose.  It  is  used 
in  this  chapter  in  a  very  broad  and  elas- 
tic sense.  It  is  something  far  broader 
than  a  deliberate  intention  to  teach  a 
lesson  or  to  preach  a  creed  —  although 
these  of  course  are  among  the  subdivisions 
of  the  author's  purpose.  Perhaps  the 
most  general,  all-embracing  definition  that 
may  be  given  is  to  call  it  simply  the  thing 
which  the  author  has  set  his  heart  upon 
saying,  the  one  main  idea  that  he  must  get 
across  to  his  audience,  whether  he  succeeds 
in  saying  anything  else  or  not.     It  comes 

[83] 


THE  AUTHOR'S  PURPOSE 

very  near  to  being  synonymous  with  the 
germ  idea,  the  nucleus  or  starting  point  of 
the  whole  work  —  but  for  the  fact  that  an 
author's  starting-point,  the  initial  incident, 
the  intuitive  flash  or  whatever  it  may  be 
that  sets  him  moving  along  a  particular 
path,  may  in  some  special  cases  be  alto- 
gether lost  to  sight  by  the  time  he  is  ready 
to  write  his  opening  sentence. 

Now  it  makes  no  difference  when  or 
where  or  how  a  writer  stumbles  upon  the 
idea  which  is  to  serve  as  his  central  pur- 
pose. It  may  spring  from  his  head  at  a  mo- 
ment's notice  like  Athena,  full  armoured  — • 
as  was  the  case  with  the  late  Frank  Norris, 
who,  as  has  often  been  told,  came  one  morn- 
ing to  his  publisher's  office,  pale  and  trem- 
bling all  over  with  excitement,  and  gasping 
out,  almost  inarticulately,  "  IVe  got  a  big 
idea!  A  great  big  idea!  The  biggest 
idea  ever!"  It  was  the  outlined  scheme 
for  his  trilogy  of  the  Epic  of  the  Wheat  — -■ 
[84] 


THE  AUTHOR'S  PURPOSE 

the  trilogy  which  began  with  The  Octopus 
and  The  Pit,  and  which  poor  Norris  did 
not  live  to  round  out  with  The  fVolf,^  Or, 
again,  the  controlling  purpose  of  a  work 
may  not  be  born  until  the  structure  has 
risen  some  distance  toward  completion  and 
the  author  suddenly  discovers  that  he  is 
building  better  than  he  knew.  But  when 
this  happens  he  must  look  carefully  to  his 

*  Compare  the  account  given  by  de  Louvenjoul  of 
Balzac's  first  conception  of  the  idea  of  bringing  to- 
gether under  one  title,  La  Comedie  Humaine,  all  the 
novels  he  had  already  published.  He  hutried  to 
the  house  of  his  sister,  Mme.  Surville,  to  announce 
the  great  event.  His  sister  beheld  him  enter  the 
parlor  with  his  hat  slightly  tilted  over  one  ear,  his 
chest  thrust  out,  his  walking  stick  held  aloft,  like  the 
staff  of  a  drum-major,  while  from  between  his  lips 
came  a  martial  "  Boom,  boora-de-de  boom !  "  and  he 
strode  forward  in  cadenced  solemnity,  as  if  he  were 
actually  at  the  head  of  a  regiment.  Reaching  the 
sofa  where  his  sister  sat,  he  suddenly  came  to  a  halt: 
then  in  a  tone  that  was  at  once  grave  and  comical, 
he  said: 

"Madam,   salute    a   Genius!" 

[85] 


THE  AUTHOR'S  PURPOSE 

foundations  to  see  if  they  be  stout  enough 
to  bear  the  weight  of  the  heavier  structure. 
Otherwise  it  would  be  better  to  tear  it 
down,  stone  from  stone,  and  begin  all  over 
again.  No  thumb  rule  can  be  given  for 
the  discovery  or  manufacture  of  the  Au- 
thor's Purpose.  If  you  find  yourself  com- 
pelled to  ask,  like  the  little  prince  in  Les 
Rois  En  Exile,  *^  Donnez  moi  des  idees  sur 
les  chosesy  then  you  had  better  lay  aside 
your  ambition  to  write.*     But  perhaps  the 

♦Interesting  in  this  connection  is  Daudet's  own 
statement  of  the  origin  of  Kings  in  Exile: 

"  Of  all  my  books  this  {Kings  in  Exile)  is  unques- 
tionably the  one  which  I  found  most  difficulty  in 
standing  on  its  feet,  the  one  which  I  carried  longest 
in  my  head  in  the  stage  of  title  and  vague  outline,  as 
it  appeared  to  me  one  October  evening  on  Place  du 
Carrousal,  in  the  tragic  rent  in  the  Parisian  sky  caused 
by  the  fall  of  the  Tuileries. 

"Dethroned  princes  exiling  themselves  in  Paris  af- 
ter their  downfall,  taking  up  their  quarters  on  Rue  de 
Rivoli,  and  when  they  woke  in  the  morning  and  raised 
the  shades  at  their  windows,  discovering  those  ruins  — 
such  was  the  first  vision  of  Kings  in  Exile." 

[86] 


THE  AUTHOR'S  PURPOSE 

advice  given  by  Thoreau  is  as  good  as  any 
that  can  be  devised  for  stimulating  a  slug- 
gish imagination: 

It  would  be  a  true  discipline  for  the  writer  to 
take  the  least  film  of  thought  that  floats  in  the 
twilight  sky  of  his  mind  for  his  theme,  about 
which  he  has  scarcely  one  idea  (that  would  be 
teaching  his  ideas  how  to  shoot),  make  a  lec- 
ture of  this,  by  assiduity  and  attention  get  per- 
chance two  views  of  the  same,  increase  a  little 
the  stock  of  knowledge,  clear  a  new  field  instead 
of  manuring  the  old. 

The  great  trouble  is  that  ideas,  real  ideas 
such  as  are  likely  to  be  of  any  importance 
or  interest  to  a  considerable  number  of  peo- 
ple, are  not  so  plentiful  as  to  be  easily 
found.  They  frequently  represent  well- 
nigh  half  the  battle  in  a  literary  achieve- 
ment of  any  importance.  It  is  always  so 
much  easier  to  echo  than  to  originate.  One 
thing  is  certain:  the  central  idea  will  not 
come  at  command;  it  must  be  patiently 

[87] 


THE  AUTHOR'S  PURPOSE 

hoped  for,  watched  for,  struggled  for;  it 
usually  represents  a  good  deal  of  hard 
work  and  a  good  deal  of  discouragement. 
Gibbon,  as  the  whole  world  knows,  re- 
ceived his  inspiration  for  his  monumental 
history  one  evening  in  Rome,  as  he  sat  mus- 
ing among  the  ruins  of  the  Capitol,  while 
the  barefooted  friars  were  singing  vespers 
in  the  Temple  of  Jupiter.  Yet  he  records, 
regarding  the  subsequent  writing  of  his 
history:  ^ 

At  the  outset,  all  was  dark  and  doubtful ;  even 
the  title  of  the  work,  the  true  era  of  the  Decline 
and  Fall  of  the  Empire,  the  limits  of  the  intro- 
duction, the  division  of  the  chapters,  and  the  order 
of  the  narrative;  and  I  was  often  tempted  to 
cast  away  the  labour  of  seven  years. 

The  uncertainty,  the  false  start,  the 
work  which  must  be  begun  anew  and  on  a 
different  plan,  have  all  been  rather  elo- 
quently generalised  by  Mr.  Henry  James 
in  his  preface  to  The  Awkward  Age: 
[88] 


THE  AUTHOR'S  PURPOSE 

When  I  think  of  my  many  false  measurements 
that  have  resulted,  after  much  anguish,  in  decent 
symmetries,  I  find  the  whole  case  a  theme  for 
the  philosopher.  The  little  ideas  one  wouldn't 
have  treated  save  for  the  design  of  keeping  them 
small,  the  developed  situation  that  one  would 
never  with  malice  prepense  have  undertaken,  the 
long  stories  that  had  thoroughly  meant  to  be 
short,  the  short  subjects  that  had  underhandedly 
plotted  to  be  long,  the  hypocrisy  of  modest  be- 
ginnings, the  audacity  of  misplaced  middles,  the 
triumph  of  intentions  never  entertained  —  with 
these  patches,  as  I  look  about,  I  see  my  experience 
paved:  an  experience  to  which  nothing  is  want- 
ing save  some  grasp  of  its  final  lesson. 

Occasionally  it  may  happen  that  the 
central  idea  comes  in  a  sort  of  miraculous 
flash,  an  Inspiration,  a  dream,  such  as  was 
the  case  with  Stevenson's  Dr.  Jekyll  and 
Mr,  Hyde:  "  In  the  small  hours  of  one 
morning,"  says  Mrs.  Stevenson,  "  I  was 
awakened  by  cries  of  horror  from  Louis. 

[89] 


THE  AUTHOR'S  PURPOSE 

Thinking  he  had  a  nightmare,  I  awakened 
him.  He  said  angrily,  *  Why  did  you  wake 
me?  I  was  dreaming  a  fine  bogey  tale.' 
I  had  awakened  him  at  the  first  transfor- 
mation scene."  So  clearly  did  Stevenson 
have  his  germ  idea  in  mind  that  the  tale 
was  written  off  in  all  the  white  heat  of  in- 
spiration; yet  it  is  recorded  that  that  first 
draft  had  to  be  destroyed  and  the  work  be- 
gun anew,  because  the  original  plan  lacked 
what  we  now  think  of  as  the  underlying 
idea  of  the  whole  story,  namely,  the  dual 
nature  of  the  hero.  In  Stevenson's  first 
conception  Dr.  Jekyll  was  equally  bad  at 
heart  in  both  his  natural  and  his  acquired 
form. 

Now  it  is  quite  true  that  the  author's 
purpose,  as  a  question  of  craftsmanship, 
concerns  no  one  but  himself;  but  there  is 
one  important  reservation.  The  author's 
purpose  must  be  suited  to  the  literary  form 
in  which  he  chooses  to  work.     He  must 

[90] 


THE  AUTHOR'S  PURPOSE  . 

decide  In  advance  whether  he  means  to  be 
a  preacher  or  an  artist;  for  he  cannot  suc- 
cessfully be  both.  If  he  Is  a  born  fighter 
and  his  chosen  weapons  are  words,  It  makes 
no  difference  which  side  of  a  controversy 
he  espouses;  he  may  fight  for  Whigs  or 
Tories,  slavery  or  emancipation,  Christian 
Science  or  the  Church  of  Rome  —  but  to 
succeed  he  must  put  the  whole  vigour  of 
his  personality  into  it.  Polemics  can  never 
be  successfully  made  a  matter  of  art  for 
art's  sake.  On  the  other  hand,  In  pure  lit- 
erature, whatever  private  feelings  an  au- 
thor may  have,  whatever  bias  he  may  let 
us  guess  at,  he  has  no  business  to  Intrude  It 
deliberately  Into  his  written  text.  Mr. 
Frederic  Harrison  In  his  Memories  and 
Thoughts  has  expressed  this  same  Impor- 
tant truth  In  a  way  that  makes  for  remem- 
brance : 

Mark  Pattlson,  of  Oxford,  used  to  say  to  a 
pupil  who  happens  now  to  be  both  a  brilliant 

[91] 


THE  AUTHOR'S  PURPOSE 

writer  and  a  leading  statesman :  "  My  good 
friend,  you  are  not  the  stuff  of  which  men  of 
letters  are  made.  You  want  to  make  people  do 
something  or  you  want  to  teach  something. 
That  IS  fatal  to  pure  literature." 

Once  or  twice  in  my  life  I  have  taken  up  the 
pen  in  a  vein  of  literary  exercise,  as  a  man  turns 
to  a  game  of  billiards  or  to  gardening  after  his 
day's  work.  But  the  demon  soon  arises  and  I 
find  myself  in  earnest,  trying  to  bring  men  over 
to  one  side.  It  is  hopeless  to  make  a  man  of 
letters  out  of  a  temper  like  that.  Literature  is 
art,  and  the  artist  should  never  preach.* 

♦And  Lord  Macaulay,  writing  of  poetry  in  his 
Essay  on  Milton,  comes  curiously  near  saying  the  same 
thing  in  slightly  different  words: 

"  Analysis  is  not  the  business  of  the  poet.  His  office 
is  to  portray,  not  to  dissect.  His  creed  .  .  .  will 
no  more  influence  his  poetry,  properly  so  called,  than 
the  notions  which  a  painter  may  have  conceived  re- 
specting the  lachrymal  glands  or  the  circulation  of 
the  blood  will  aflFect  the  tears  of  his  Niobe  or  the 
blushes  of  his  Aurora.  If  Shakespeare  had  written  a 
book  on  the  motives  of  human  actions,  it  is  by  no 
means  certain  that  it  would  have  been  a  good  one." 

[92] 


THE  AUTHOR'S  PURPOSE 

And  similarly  Marion  Crawford  in  his 
little  monograph  on  The  Novel:  What  It 
Is,  writes  as  follows: 

In  art  of  all  kinds  the  moral  lesson  is  a  mis- 
take. It  is  one  thing  to  exhibit  an  ideal  worthy 
to  be  imitated,  though  inimitable  in  all  its  per- 
fection, but  so  clearly  noble  as  to  appeal  directly 
to  the  sympathetic  string  that  hangs  untuned  in 
the  dullest  heart;  to  make  man  brave  without 
arrogance,  woman  pure  without  prudishness,  love 
enduring  yet  earthly,  not  angelic,  friendship  sin- 
cere but  not  ridiculous.  It  is  quite  another  mat- 
ter to  write  a  "  guide  to  morality,"  or  a  "  hand- 
book for  practical  sinners  "  and  call  either  one 
a  novel,  no  matter  how  much  fiction  it  may  con- 
tain. Wordsworth  tried  the  moral  lesson  and 
spoiled  some  of  his  best  work  with  botany  and 
the  Bible. 

It  is  the  disregard  of  this  important  ax- 
iom of  literature  that  has  produced  that 
hybrid  monstrosity,  the  so-called  Novel- 
with-a-Purpose.    Of  all  the  purposes  which 

[93] 


THE  AUTHOR'S  PURPOSE 

by  any  chance  may  actuate  a  writer  the 
most  mistaken  purpose  and  the  one  most 
destructive  to  good  art  is  that  of  forcibly 
bringing  people  over  to  think  as  he  does 
by  a  deliberate  and  conscienceless  distor- 
tion of  life  as  we  see  it  around  us.  There 
was  not  merely  a  degree  of  grotesqueness 
in  the  old-fashioned  Sunday-school  story 
of  the  good  little  boy  who  had  plum  pud- 
ding and  the  bad  little  boy  who  went  fish- 
ing and  was  drowned.  There  was  an  im- 
morality about  it  as  well,  the  immorality 
that  always  attaches  to  a  deliberate  perver- 
sion of  our  experiences  of  life.  And  the 
same  immorality  attaches  to  any  novelist 
who  takes  upon  himself  the  privilege  of  the 
Deity  and  says  "  Vengeance  is  mine,"  for- 
getful of  the  fact  that  in  this  world  at  least 
rewards  and  punishments  of  human  acts 
are  meted  out  quite  inexorably  in  accord- 
ance with  the  laws  of  nature. 

Having  digressed  to  this  extent  upon 

[94] 


THE  AUTHOR'S  PURPOSE 

the  special  subject  of  the  purpose  novel, 
we  must  in  fairness  go  a  little  further 
in  order  to  make  clear  a  distinction 
about  which  a  good  deal  of  confusion  ex- 
ists in  the  minds  of  many  readers  and  writ- 
ers. It  may  be  defined  as  the  distinction 
between  the  Novel-with-a-Purpose,  on  the 
one  hand,  and  the  Author-with-a-Purpose, 
on  the  other.  There  is  no  logical  reason 
why  an  author  should  not  have  the  strong- 
est sort  of  prejudices,  convictions,  enthusi- 
asms; only,  he  must  not  be  trying  to  force 
them  down  the  reader's  throat.  He  may 
believe,  like  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe,  that 
slavery  is  a  crime ;  he  may  agree  with  Zola 
that  race  suicide  is  a  national  menace.  A 
sincere  belief  of  that  sort  is  the  surest  guar- 
antee of  powerful  workmanship,  so  long  as 
the  author  records  only  what  he  sees,  so 
long  as  he  remembers  that  life  itself  is 
the  most  potent  teacher  of  its  own  les- 
sons.    But  so  soon  as  he  becomes  mistrust- 

[95] 


THE  AUTHOR'S  PURPOSE 

ful  or  impatient  of  life  and  tries  dishon- 
estly to  magnify  the  facts  and  distort  sta- 
tistics, then  his  book  becomes  a  Novel- 
with-a-Purpose,  more  potent  to  antagonise 
than  to  convince.  A  good  object  lesson 
on  the  distinction  between  the  Novel-with- 
a-Purpose  and  the  Author-with-a-Purpose 
is  afforded  by  the  Russians.  Owing  to 
Russian  censorship  writers  with  strong 
doctrines  to  preach  found  themselves 
driven  to  the  form  of  fiction  as  the  only 
vehicle  in  which  the  lessons  they  wished 
to  teach  could  reach  the  public.  But  they 
were  wise  enough  to  recognise  that  the  ex- 
isting conditions  around  them,  the  condi- 
tions they  were  most  eager  to  correct, 
would  speak  for  themselves  without  any 
perversion  or  interference  In  their  part. 
As  Mr.  Howells  in  My  Literary  Passions 
forcefully  puts  it: 

When  I  remembered  the  deliberate  and  impa- 

[96] 


THE  AUTHOR'S  PURPOSE 

tient  moralising  of  Thackeray,  the  clumsy  ex- 
egesis of  George  Eliot,  the  knowing  nods  and 
winks  of  Charles  Reade,  the  stage-carpeting  and 
limelighting  of  Dickens,  and  even  the  fine  and 
impotent  analysis  of  Hawthorne,  it  was  with  a 
joyful  enthusiasm  that  I  realised  the  great  art 
of  Tourguenief  .  .  .  here  was  a  master 
who  was  apparently  not  trying  to  work  out  a  plot, 
who  was  not  even  trying  to  work  out  a  char- 
acter, but  was  standing  aside  from  the  whole 
affair  and  letting  the  characters  work  the  plot 
out. 

But  whatever  a  writer's  purpose  may 
be,  and  whatever  type  of  literature  he  has 
chosen  in  which  to  express  it,  he  has  got  tq 
do  something  more  than  Idly  say  to  him- 
self one  fine  day,  "  I  think  I  will  write  (let 
us  say)  a  sonnet  about  a  pearl,  or  a  novel 
about  the  beef  trust,"  —  and  then  on  an- 
other fine  day  formulates  his  first  line  or 
his  opening  sentence  without  the  slightest 
idea  what  Is  coming  next  or  where  he  even- 

[97] 


THE  AUTHOR'S  PURPOSE 

tually  proposes  to  arrive.  He  must  take 
the  time  and  trouble  to  sit  down  and  work 
out  in  detail  just  precisely  what  he  is  try- 
ing to  do  and  what  is  the  best  way  of  do- 
ing it.  It  is  not  only  in  the  department 
of  the  drama  that  a  scenario  is  indispen- 
sable. Every  piece  of  writing  that  aspires 
to  be  anything  more  than  ephemeral  is  as 
much  in  need  of  a  detailed  ground  plan  as 
a  Gothic  cathedral  or  a  modern  office 
building.  All  beginners  who  cherish  the 
dangerous  fallacy  that  a  masterpiece  of 
prose  or  verse  can  be  flung  off  in  a  white 
heat  of  inspiration  would  do  well  to  commit 
to  memory  a  large  part  of  Poe's  essay  on 
The  Philosophy  of  Composition^  of  which 
the  following  are  perhaps  the  most  weighty 
and  apposite  paragraphs: 

Most  writers, —  poets  in  especial, —  prefer  to 
have  it  understood  that  they  compose  by  a  species 
of  fine  frenzy  —  an  ecstatic  intuition ;  and  would 

[98] 


THE  AUTHOR'S  PURPOSE 

positively  shudder  at  letting  the  public  take  a 
peep  behind  the  scenes  at  the  elaborate  and  vacil- 
lating conditions  of  thought,  at  the  true  pur- 
poses seized  only  at  the  last  moment,  at  the  in- 
numerable glimpses  of  ideas  that  arrived  not  at 
the  maturity  of  full  viev^r,  at  the  fully  matured 
fancies  discarded  in  despair  as  unmanageable,  at 
the  cautious  selection  and  rejection,  at  the  pain- 
ful erasures  and  interpolations  —  in  a  word,  at 
the  vrheels  and  pinions,  the  tackle  of  scene-shift- 
ing, the  step-ladders  and  demon-traps,  the  cock's 
feathers,  the  red  paint  and  the  black  patches, 
which  in  ninety-nine  cases  out  of  the  hundred 
constitute  the  properties  of  the  literary  histrio. 

For  my  own  part,  I  have  neither  sympathy 
with  the  repugnance  alluded  to,  nor  at  any 
time  the  least  difficulty  in  recalling  to  mind  the 
progressive  steps  of  any  of  my  compositions;  and 
since  the  interest  of  an  analysis  or  reconstruc- 
tion, such  as  I  have  considered  a  desideratum,  is 
quite  independent  of  any  real  or  fancied  interest 
in  the  things  analysed,  it  will  not  be  regarded 
as  a  breach  of  decorum  on  my  part  to  show  the 
modus  operandi  by  which  some  one  of  my  own 

[99] 


THE  AUTHOR'S  PURPOSE 

works  was  put  together.  I  select  The  Raven 
as  most  generally  known.  It  is  my  design  to 
render  it  manifest  that  no  one  point  in  its  com- 
position is  referable  either  to  accident  or  intuition ; 
that  the  work  proceeded  step  by  step  to  its  com- 
pletion with  the  precision  and  rigid  consequence 
of  a  mathematical  problem. 

Poe,  of  course,  is  an  extreme  case.  A 
poem  or  a  story  that  develops  with  the 
rigid  consequence  of  a  mathematical  prob- 
lem is  necessarily  too  artificial  to  pass  as 
a  transcript  from  life.  But  a  study  of 
Poe's  analysis  of  The  Raven  —  quite  aside 
from  the  question  whether  he  actually 
wrote  the  poem,  as  he  says  he  did,  or 
merely  succeeded  in  making  himself  think 
he  did  so  *  —  compels  us  to  face,  for  our- 

*Poe  wrote  the  Raven,  later  the  genesis  of  this 
Raven.  This  —  the  after-stroke  —  American  pleas- 
antry, no  doubt,  but  admired  and  emulated  by  our 
young  school.  The  devil  of  the  thing  is  to  find  the 
raven,  the  dry  sob,  the  foreboding  nevermore. — Daudet, 
Notes  from  Life. 

[lOO] 


THE  author;?  ,reXP9?^^i}i'i  i\ 

selves,  In  all  our  own  work,  the  artistic 
demand  for  unity  of  effect,  simplicity  of 
means,  singleness  of  purpose.  Learn  to 
do  as  much  as  possible  of  the  sheer  drudg- 
ery of  composition  at  the  start;  every 
hour  spent  In  careful  drafting  should  save 
two  in  the  actual  writing.  An  extreme 
case  which  none  the  less  is  a  case  In  point, 
is,  contained  In  the  following  anecdote 
given  by  Mr.  A.  E.  Davidson  In  his  Life 
of  Alexandre  Dumas: 

Dumas  often  declared  that,  when  once  he 
had  mapped  out  in  his  mind  the  scheme  of  a 
novel  or  a  play,  the  work  was  practically  ac- 
complished, since  the  mere  writing  of  it  pre- 
sented no  difficulty,  and  could  be  performed  as 
fast  as  the  pen  could  travel.  Someone  begged 
leave  to  dispute  this  assertion,  and  the  result 
was  a  wager.  Dumas  had  at  that  time  in  his 
head  the  plan  of  the  Chevalier  de  Maison  Rouge, 
of  which  he  had  not  yet  written  a  word,  and 
he  now  made  a  bet  of  one  hundred  louis  with 

[lOl] 


■;  vfl^rKF/A^yXHOR'S  PURPOSE 

his  sceptical  friend  that  he  would  write  the  first 
volume  of  the  novel  in  seventy-two  hours  (in- 
cluding the  time  for  meals  and  sleep).  The 
volume  was  to  be  formed  by  seventy-five  large 
foolscap  pages,  each  page  containing  forty-five 
lines  and  each  line  fifty  letters.  In  sixty-six 
hours  Dumas  had  done  the  work, —  3375  lines  — 
in  his  fair,  flowing  hand,  disfigured  by  no  eras- 
ures,—  and  the  bet  was  won  with  six  hours  to 
spare. 

Dumas,  however,  was  a  striking  excep- 
tion in  being  able  to  dispense  with  re- 
vision. Alternate  elimination  and  expan- 
sion is  the  method  by  which  great  works  of 
literature  have  usually  reached  their  final 
form  —  and  it  is  far  easier  to  expand  and 
cut,  expand  and  cut  again,  in  the  mere 
rough  outline  than  in  the  fully  developed 
book.  Don't  shirk  your  plot  construction 
—  and  here  I  am  using  the  phrase  in  an 
all-embracing  sense  —  an  essay  or  a  ser- 
mon deserves  careful  plotting  as  much  as 
[102] 


THE  AUTHOR'S  PURPOSE 

a  novel  —  plot  construction  is  a  whole- 
some discipline ;  and  while  there  is  not  one 
chance  in  a  hundred  that  you  will  overdo 
it,  there  is  every  chance  that  you  will  all 
the  time  be  teaching  yourself  some  new 
and  useful  trick,  some  clever  short-cut, 
some  way  of  knitting  your  whole  structure 
more  firmly  together.  It  would  be  well 
if  every  young  writer  were  to  reduce  to  a 
ten-word  limit  his  central  idea  before  even 
starting  to  plot  his  story;  keep  those  ten 
words  inscribed  upon  a  cardboard,  hang- 
ing above  his  desk,  and  ask  himself,  with 
each  incident,  each  character,  each  shift 
of  scene,  "  To  what  degree  does  this  help 
on  my  central  idea?  Is  it  essential,  or 
only  a  digression?  If  not  actually  re- 
lated, has  it  a  symbolic  significance  that 
justifies  it  structurally?  In  any  case,  is  it 
the  best,  the  very  last  and  best  thing  I 
can  do?"  If  not,  then  cut  it  out  ruth- 
lessly and  try  again,  and  yet  again,  until 
[103] 


THE  AUTHOR'S  PURPOSE 

you  are  sure  that  the  best  of  which  you  are 
capable  Is  found. 

Of  course,  it  Is  quite  easy  for  someone 
to  object  that  many  of  the  greatest  masters 
of  the  past  have  not  composed  In  this  man- 
ner; that  Fielding  and  Smollett,  Dickens 
and  Thackeray  were  notoriously  loose  In 
plot  construction,  and  that  Trollope  him- 
self acknowledges,  "  I  have  never  troubled 
myself  about  the  construction  of  plots  and 
am  not  now  Insisting  on  thoroughness  In 
a  branch  of  work  In  which  I  myself  have 
not  been  very  thorough.''  And  the  ob- 
jector might  go  a  step  further  and  ask: 
Did  Shakespeare,  when  he  was  writing 
Hamlet,  Inscribe  above  his  desk,  "  To  be 
or  not  to  be,  that  Is  the  question,"  as  a  re- 
minder that  his  theme  was  the  tragedy  of 
a  vacillating  nature;  or  similarly,  when 
he  wrote  Othello,  "  A  man  not  easily  jeal- 
ous but,  when  roused,  perplexed  In  the  ex- 
treme"; or  again  for  Macbeth,  "  Vault- 
[104] 


THE  AUTHOR'S  PURPOSE 

Ing  ambition  that  o'erleaps  itself,  and  falls 
on  the  other "  ?  And  of  course  the  an- 
swer Is  obvious  enough:  that  the  masters 
of  literature  are  great  enough  to  break 
the  rules;  that  had  Shakespeare  constructed 
as  Ibsen  did,  English  literature  would  have 
been  robbed  of  some  of  its  noblest  lines; 
and  that  when  we  speak  of  the  craftsman- 
ship of  writing  we  are  speaking  of  rules 
that  must  be  mastered  before  one  has 
earned  the  right  to  break  them. 

Remember,  also,  in  choosing  the  au- 
thors who  are  to  be  your  models,  to  exer- 
cise discrimination  regarding  the  partic- 
ular qualities  that  you  will  copy  from  each 
of  them.  Go  to  Dickens  and  Thackeray 
for  character  drawing,  if  you  choose,  but 
not  for  plot.  And  similarly,  remember 
that  Trollope  was  able  to  say  of  his  char- 
acters : 

There  Is  a  gallery  of  them,  and  of  all  that  gal- 

[105] 


THE  AUTHOR'S  PURPOSE 

lery  I  may  say  that  I  know  the  tone  of  the  voice, 
and  the  colour  of  the  hair,  every  flame  of  the 
eye,  and  the  very  clothes  they  wear.  Of  each 
man  I  could  assert  whether  he  would  have  said 
these  words  or  the  other  words ;  of  every  woman, 
whether  she  would  then  have  smiled  or  so  have 
frowned.  When  I  shall  feel  that  this  intimacy 
ceases,  then  I  shall  know  that  the  old  horse  should 
be  turned  out  to  grass. 

But  if  you  want  a  model  of  careful  con- 
struction from  among  the  early  novelists, 
you  can  do  no  better  than  turn  to  Haw- 
thorne. "  Hawthorne's  method,"  says 
Andrew  Lang,  "  is  revealed  in  his  pub- 
lished note-books.  In  them  he  jotted  the 
germ  of  an  idea,  the  first  notion  of  a  sin- 
gular, perhaps  supernatural  situation. 
Many  of  these  he  never  used  at  all;  on 
others  he  would  dream  and  dream  till  the 
persons  in  the  situations  became  characters 
and  the  thing  was  evolved  into  a  story. 
Thus  he  may  have  invented  such  a  prob- 
[io6] 


THE  AUTHOR'S  PURPOSE 

lem  as  this :  *  The  effect  of  a  great,  sudden 
sin  on  a  simple  and  joyous  nature/  and 
thence  came  all  the  substance  of  The 
Marble  Faun/'  As  a  matter  of  fact,  The 
Marble  Faun  Is  a  very  wonderful  example 
of  close  construction  admirably  disguised. 
It  has  all  the  effect  of  a  vast  canvas,  a 
prodigality  of  material  In  character,  and 
Incident,  and  panoramic  scene;  but  under 
examination.  It  reveals  little  by  little  the 
nice  balance  of  all  its  parts,  the  rigid 
economy  of  Its  means,  the  fine  art  that 
has  subordinated  every  part  to  a  consist- 
ent development  of  the  central  Idea,  a 
conservation  of  the  unity  of  purpose. 

Second  only  In  Importance  to  having 
a  purpose  Is  the  necessity  of  clothing  that 
purpose  In  a  suitable  form.  Some  themes 
lend  themselves  to  a  variety  of  different 
treatments.  A  great  war  may  give  us  both 
an  epic  and  an  opera-boufe,  an  Iliad  and 
La  Belle  Helene,  The  sin  of  Intemper- 
[107] 


THE  AUTHOR'S  PURPOSE 

ance  jfinds  expression  at  one  time  in  a 
UAssommoir  and  at  another  in  a  Tarn 
O'Shanter,  And  in  general  the  rule  may- 
be laid  down,  that  the  form  in  which  any 
central  idea  is  to  be  clothed  depends  less 
upon  the  idea  than  upon  the  individual 
ability  of  the  author.  But  the  practical 
distinction  of  this  is  really  not  great.  You 
may  have  conceived  some  light,  frothy  lit- 
tle idea,  such  as  would  make  a  graceful 
triolet;  It  makes  no  difference  whether  a 
triolet  Is  the  biggest  thing  lurking  in  that 
idea,  or  whether  someone  else  might  take 
It  and  develop  It  Into  something  of  much 
greater  dignity  —  in  either  case  it  Is  an 
error  of  judgment  on  your  part  to  give 
that  little  idea  the  misplaced  dignity  of  an 
elegy  or  a  sonnet.  Or  perhaps  you  have 
hit  upon  a  really  big  situation  deserving 
of  the  broad  treatment  of  a  Hardy  or  a 
Meredith;  if  you  are  able  to  see  it  In  that 
broad,  big  way  be  careful  not  to  squander 
[io8] 


THE  AUTHOR'S  PURPOSE 

it  on  a  short  story  or  hammock  novel,  no 
matter  how  many  other  writers  might,  with 
more  limited  vision,  have  chosen  to  do  the 
smaller  thing. 

Just  precisely  what  literary  form  is  the 
best  possible  form  in  which  to  clothe  a 
central  idea  is  another  of  those  many 
things  that  cannot  be  taught,  because  it 
IS  so  peculiarly  personal  to  each  writer. 
My  own  conviction  is  that  it  is  something 
largely  instinctive;  that  a  short-story 
theme  usually  presents  Itself  to  the  mind 
In  the  first  instance  as  a  short  story,  a 
dramatic  theme  as  a  drama,  and  the  mate- 
rial for  a  long  novel  as  a  long  novel  and 
nothing  else.  The  Anglo-Saxon  writer, 
however,  both  in  England  and  America, 
is  very  largely  a  writer  of  one  or  at  most 
two  literary  forms.  This  is  in  marked 
contrast  to  the  Continental  habit.  In 
France  and  Italy  it  Is  quite  in  the  ordi- 
nary course  of  things  for  a  young  writer 
[109] 


THE  AUTHOR'S  PURPOSE 

to  begin  with  a  volume  of  verse,*  follow 
it  up  with  collected  essays,  usually  of  liter- 
ary criticism,  then  a  novel  or  two,  a  four- 
act  play  —  and  at  that  time  he  has  reached 
a  point  where  he  feels  at  liberty  to  confine 
himself  to  whichever  form  he  finds  most 
congenial.  A  man  with  this  sort  of  train- 
ing may,  of  course,  have  wasted  himself 
to  some  extent  in  misplaced  efforts,  in  at- 
tempting certain  things  for  which  he  was 
not  temperamentally  fitted;  but  he  seldom 
makes  the  mistake  of  trying  to  fit  an  idea 
into  the  wrong  literary  framework.  It  is 
the  other  type  of  craftsman,  so  common  in 
this  country;  the  man  who  starts  with  a 

*  "  Maupassant  began  by  writing  verses ;  that  seems 
to  be  the  rule,  the  versified  form  being  the  inevitable 
one  for  the  dawn  of  literature  and  for  the  budding 
writer  as  well.  Nearly  all  the  masters  of  contem- 
porary prose  have  begun  by  writing  verse,  even  M. 
Alexandre  Dumas  himself.  Later  they  have  proved 
their  critical  taste  by  not  repeating  the  experiment." — 
Rene  Doumic,  Essay  on  Maupassant. 

[no] 


THE  AUTHOR'S  PURPOSE 

feed  idea  that  he  is  to  be  a  dramatist  and 
nothing  else,  or  a  lyric  poet  and  nothing 
else,  or  an  essay  writer  and  nothing  else  — 
who  is  all  the  time  trying  to  force  his  ideas 
into  a  shape  for  which  they  were  not 
meant.  If,  for  instance,  a  man  cannot  and 
will  not  write  anything  but  a  sonnet;  If 
he  is  unable  to  think  in  any  other  terms 
than  those  of  a  sonnet,  then  whenever  an 
idea  comes  to  him  that  is  not  a  sonnet 
idea,  he  must  either  reject  it  altogether  or 
else  produce  a  sonnet  that  had  better  not 
have  been  written.  For  these  reasons  it 
cannot  be  too  forcibly  urged  upon  young 
writers  to  keep  their  minds  open  by  the 
practice  of  several  different  forms  at 
once.  You  are  sure  to  be  eventually  a 
better  dramatist  for  having  had  some 
practice  In  narrative  fiction;  and  you  will 
probably  write  a  better  short  story  if  you 
have  occasionally  done  a  little  literary 
criticism.     There  is  more  common  sense 

[III] 


THE  AUTHOR'S  PURPOSE 

than  appears  on  the  surface  in  the  casual 
confession  by  Mr.  A.  C.  Benson  in  his 
lightful  volume  From  a  College  Window: 

The  two  things  I  have  found  to  be  of  infinite 
service  to  myself  in  learning  to  write  prose  have 
been  keeping  a  full  diary  and  writing  poetry. 

It  IS  interesting  to  remember  In  this  con- 
nection that  George  Meredith  once  wrote: 

Writing  for  the  stage  would  be  a  corrective  of 
a  too  incrusted  scholarly  style,  Into  which  some 
great  ones  fall  at  times.  It  keeps  minor  writers 
to  a  definite  plan  and  English. 

In  other  words,  in  literature  as  well  as 
in  life  there  are  some  occasions  when  the 
longest  way  round  Is  the  shortest  way 
home,  and  one  of  them  Is  the  art  of  ac- 
quiring a  particular  branch  of  literary 
form  by  the  practice  of  forms  that  are 
radically  different. 


[112] 


IV 

THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  FORM 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  TECHNIQUE   OF   FORM 

There  are  few  of  us  who  have  not,  at 
one  time  or  another,  been  drawn  into  the 
childish  pastime  of  attempting  to  trace  a 
pig  with  our  eyes  blindfolded.  We  us- 
ually began  bravely  enough  by  drawing 
two  fairly  symmetrical  ears,  and  if  the 
pencil  was  not  quite  as  steady  as  It  might 
have  been,  as  It  proceeded  to  delineate  the 
snout,  the  general  effect  was  rather  credit- 
able; at  least,  the  bystanders  had  not  yet 
found  adequate  cause  for  merriment.  But 
when  It  came  to  the  legs,  our  sense  of 
proportion  weakened,  wavered,  slipped  ut- 
terly from  us;  those  four  legs  straggled 
across  the  paper  In  riotous  disorder  like 
the   distortions  of  a  convex  mirror,   the 

[IIS] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  FORM 

pencil  wobbled  more  and  more  hopelessly 
and  the  last  mad  dash  for  the  finish 
landed,  as  likely  as  not,  in  the  middle  of 
the  fore  leg  instead  of  at  the  starting 
point,  the  tail  curled  in  a  fantastic  cork- 
screw from  the  middle  of  the  back,  and 
the  eye,  added  as  an  afterthought,  gazed 
at  us  in  a  detached  sort  of  way  some  inches 
from  the  rest  of  the  drawing.  All  this 
may  seem  irrelevant  to  the  Craftsmanship 
of  Writing,  but  unfortunately  it  is  not. 
*One  of  the  commonest  experiences  in  a 
critic's  ordinary  routine  is  to  come  across 
literary  efforts  of  various  form  and  magni- 
tude which  convey  the  impression  that  they 
too  have  been  constructed  with  the  eyes 
blindfolded.*     The  mala  difference  is  that 

♦Writers  should  remember  Carlyle's  advice:  "To 
the  poet,  as  to  every  other,  we  say,  first  of  all.  See, 
If  you  cannot  do  that,  it  is  of  no  use  to  keep  stringing 
rhymes  together,  jingling  sensibilities  against  each 
other,  and  name  yourself  a  foet;  there  is  no  hope  for 
you." 

[ii6] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  FORM 

the  general  effect  is  more  saddening  than 
ludicrous.  And  the  reason  for  this,  of 
course,  is  that  there  is  nothing  especially 
discreditable  to  the  average  man  or  woman 
to  be  unable  to  draw  a  pig  with  their  eyes 
blindfolded,  while  for  the  literary  crafts- 
man to  be  careless  and  slovenly  in  his  tech- 
nique of  form  is  not  only  discreditable  but 
without  excuse. 

Now,  having  introduced  this  metaphor 
of  the  pig,  let  us  go  a  step  further  and 
find  out  clearly  to  what  extent  it  applies 
to  the  literary  craftsman.  There  is  no 
hard  and  fast  rule  regarding  form,  whether 
we  are  speaking  of  drawing  a  pig  or  writ- 
ing a  short  story;  in  either  process  there  is 
ample  latitude  for  individual  expression 
—  there  is  no  such  absolute  uniformity  re- 
quired as  in  minting  a  gold  eagle  or  mould- 
ing a  Rogers  group.  Your  literary  or  ar- 
tistic pig  may  be  fat  or  lean,  contented  or 
disgruntled,  small,  round  and  pink,  or  ra- 

[117] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  FORM 

zor-backed  and  black  and  bristling  —  but 
you  have  no  right  to  take  liberties  with 
his  recognised  anatomical  'structure  — 
draw  any  kind  of  a  pig  you  choose,  so  long 
as  it  remains  a  pig.  In  other  words,  you 
have  no  right  to  profess  to  be  working  in 
a  certain  recognised  literary  form,  and 
then  so  distort  the  leading  characteristics 
of  that  form  that  it  becomes  something 
entirely  different.  "  The  confusion  of 
kinds,"  says  Henry  James,  *'  is  the  inele- 
gance of  letters  and  the  stultification  of 
values." 

It  aoes  not  by  any  means  follow  that  an 
author  is  not  free  to  invent  new  literary 
forms  or  varieties,  if  he  has  the  inventive 
power.  There  is  no  rule  in  art  forbidding 
the  unusual,  the  new  or  even  the  grotesque. 
There  is  no  reason  why  we  should  not 
have,  from  time  to  time,  something  un- 
dreamed of  in  the  philosophy  of  literary 
form,   any  more  than  there  is   a  reason 

[1.18] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  FORM 

why  the  sculptor  should  not  carve  a  grif- 
fin out  of  stone,  although  he  never  saw  a 
griffin  in  the  flesh.  Otherwise  we  should 
have  been  deprived  of  some  of  the  most 
interesting  experiments  in  English  litera- 
ture: Gulliver's  Travels,  and  Pilgrim's 
Progress,  the  De  Cover  ley  Papers,  Alice's 
Adventures,  the  Jungle  Books,  and  Red- 
coat Captain  —  the  list  could  be  pro- 
longed indefinitely.  But  any  writer  who 
wishes  to  discard  the  accepted  forms  and 
make  new  forms  for  himself  would  do  well 
to  remember  what  Ruskin  said  regarding 
the  difference  between  the  Lombard  grif- 
fin and  the  classical  griffin,  in  his  chapter 
on  the  Grotesque: 

"  Well,  but,"  the  reader  says,  "  what  do  you 
mean  by  calling  either  of  them  true?  There 
never  were  such  beasts  in  the  world  as  either 
of  these." 

No,  never;  but  the  difference  is,  that  the 
Lombard  workman  did  really  see  a  griffin  in  his 

["9l 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  FORM 

imagination,  and  carved  it  from  the  life,  meaning 
to  declare  to  all  ages  that  he  had  verily  seen  with 
his  immortal  eyes  such  a  griffin  as  that;  but  the 
classical  workman  never  saw  a  griffin  at  all,  nor 
anything  else;  but  put  the  whole  thing  together 
by  line  and  rule. 

In  other  words,  if  a  writer  is  big 
enough,  inspired  enough  —  call  it  what 
you  will  —  to  see  with  his  Immortal  eyes 
some  new  and  better  form,  then  let  him 
use  it  fearlessly,  provided  that  he  is  quite 
sure  that  it  is  a  new  form  and  not  a  dis- 
torted old  one.  For  it  is  a  much  rarer 
and  harder  thing  to  produce  a  glorified 
griffin  than  a  misshapen  pig. 

Yet  the  necessity  of  studying  the  tech- 
nique of  form  in  all  its  minutest  de- 
tails is  so  little  understood  and  so  slowly 
grasped  by  the  average  beginner  In 
writing  that  it  is  a  temptation  to  in- 
sist upon  its  paramount  importance  even 
to  the  point  of  tediousness.  So  many 
[120] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  FORM 

young  writers  have  their  answer  all  pat: 
What,  they  ask,  is  the  use  of  putting  so 
much  stress  on  form?  The  great  writers 
of  the  past  were  notoriously  loose  and  care- 
less in  construction;  look  at  the  rambling, 
episodic  character  of  Homer  and  Cer- 
vantes and  Rabelais;  and  were  Fielding 
and  Thackeray  and  Dickens  much  better 
in  their  technique  of  plot?  Of  course,  all 
this  is  perfectly  true;  and  the  chief  reason 
why  so  many  young  writers  —  and  older 
ones,  too,  for  that  matter  —  are  slow  to 
appreciate  the  importance  of  good  tech- 
nique, is  the  conservative  force  of  tradi- 
tion —  the  great  masters  of  the  past,  who 
wrote  before  the  more  elaborate  technique 
of  to-day  had  been  developed,  did  thus  and 
so;  and  if  good  enough  for  them,  why  not, 
is  the  argument,  good  enough  for  us?  No 
less  a  person  than  the  Spanish  novelist, 
Sefior  Valdes,  betrays  in  this  regard  a 
curious    lack    of    critical    acumen:     The 

[121] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  FORM 

Latin  races,  he  grants,  are  accustomed  to 
give  greater  attention  to  unity  of  structure ; 
the  Anglo-Saxons  and  the  Slavs,  on  the 
contrary,  prefer  a  greater  variety  of  in- 
terest, a  more  prodigal  abundance  of  life : 

One  of  the  best  contemporary  Russian  nov- 
els, War  and  Peace,  might  with  very  little  ef- 
fort be  divided  In  two,  because  it  contains  two 
perfectly  defined  actions,  which  are  carried  on 
side  by  side  throughout  the  whole  course  of 
the  book.  Which  of  these  conceptions  of  the 
composition  of  a  novel  Is  the  true  one?  In  my 
opinion,  both  of  them.  To  decide  In  favour 
of  one  of  them  would  be  to  assert  the  Inferiority 
of  the  novels  written  according  to  the  other  — 
and  that  seems  to  me  unjust.  Dickens,  Thack- 
eray, Gogol,  Tolstoy  are  as  excellent  novelists  as 
Balzac,  George  Sand,  Flaubert  and  Manzoni.* 

The  fallacy  of  Senor  Valdes*s  argument, 
of  course,  is  his  failure  to  recognise  that 
while  the  English   and   Russian   novelists 

*  From  preface  to  La  Hermana  San  Sulplcio, 
[122] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  FORM 

whom  he  names  are  as  great,  if  not 
greater,  than  the  French  and  Italian,  their 
greatness  is  not  due  to  their  looser  method 
of  construction,  but  in  spite  of  it.  There 
is  progress  in  the  art  of  writing,  as  well  as 
in  other  arts,  and  the  wise  modern  writer 
profits  by  the  improved  methods.  The 
tales  of  Boccaccio  are  inimitable  specimens 
of  their  kind;  but  now  that  we  have  the 
modern  conception  of  what  a  short  story 
should  be,  as  formulated  by  Poe  and  Mau- 
passant and  Kipling,  it  would  seem  scarcely 
worth  while  for  any  writer  of  to-day  delib- 
erately to  revert  to  the  cruder  form  of  the 
early  Italian  novella,  Balzac's  Contes  Dro- 
lattques  are  likely  to  remain  the  last  at- 
tempt of  the  sort  to  gain  literary  recogni- 
tion. Don  Quixote  is  one  of  the  three  or 
four  indisputably  greatest  books  in  the 
world  —  but  that  is  no  reason  why  any 
twentieth-century  tyro  in  novel  writing 
should  take  Cervantes  for  his  model  and 
[123] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  FORM 

imitate  successfully  all  his  faults  of  con- 
struction, while  the  magic  that  makes  the 
book  unique  forever  eludes  it  imitators. 

It  seems  inevitable  that  in  discussing  the 
technique  of  form  the  argument  should 
tend  constantly  to  revert  to  prose  rather 
than  poetry,  and  to  the  novel  in  preference 
to  all  other  prose  forms.  And  it  is  quite 
natural  that  this  should  be  so.  The  ne- 
cessity of  structure  in  verse  is  in  a  way  axio- 
matic; it  enters  into  the  very  definition. 
In  short,  in  all  verse,  from  the  greatest  to 
the  least,  there  is  something  which  may 
not  unjustly  be  called  architectural  in  the 
way  it  IS  built.  Indeed,  the  more  formal 
types,  like  the  rondeau,  the  ballade,  the 
rondel,  the  sonnet,  offer  to  the  eye,  as 
they  lie  upon  the  printed  page,  as  definite 
a  suggestion  of  a  ground  plan  as  any  blue 
print  of  the  modern  draughtsman.  The 
regularity  of  recurring  rhymes,  the  mar- 
shalled lines  of  numbered  syllables  and 

[124] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  FORM 

stresses  Inevitably  suggest  the  methodical 
courses  of  brick  and  masonry,  the  stately 
rows  of  Doric  columns  or  Gothic  pinna- 
cles. Every  great  epic  is  a  temple  in 
words,  every  nursery  rhyme  a  structure  of 
toy  blocks,  playthings  of  uncomprehend- 
ing merriment.  Carlyle  was  not  the  first 
writer  to  liken  the  Divine  Comedy  to  a 
cathedral;  but  no  one  has  ever  worded  it 
so  well : 

A  true  inward  symmetry,  what  we  call  an 
architectural  harmony,  reigns  in  it,  proportion- 
ates it  all ;  .  .  .  the  three  kingdoms,  Inferno y 
Purgatorio,  Paradiso,  look  out  on  one  another 
like  compartments  of  a  great  edifice;  a  great^^ 
supernatural  world-cathedral  piled  up  there,  stern, 
solemn,  awful;   Dante's  World  of   Souls! 

Now  in  prose,  and  especially  in  fiction, 
which  enjoys  the  advantage  of  being  the 
most  elastic  of  all  literary  forms,  the 
architectural   element  is   far  less   in   evi- 

[125] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  FORM 

dence,  because  the  best  technique  In  fic- 
tion demands  the  most  careful  framework, 
most  carefully  disguised.  But,  supposing 
that  a  young  writer  says  quite  frankly,  "  I 
recognise  the  truth  of  all  you  say;  I  be- 
lieve in  the  importance  of  the  Technique 
of  Form,  and  I  want  to  learn  and  obey  the 
rules  of  the  best  construction.  If  I  try  to 
write  a  novel,  I  want  it  to  be  a  novel  in 
the  best  sense,  and  not  a  string  of  short 
stories.  If  I  write  a  short  story,  I  want 
to  feel  sure  that  it  is  truly  a  short  story 
in  spirit  and  inherent  purpose,  as  well  as 
in  outward  form.  But  how  am  I  to  de- 
cide what  particular  artistic  form  is  best 
adapted  to  be  my  medium  of  expression? 
What  I  want  to  write  is  (let  us  say)  a 
novel ;  but  are  my  ideas  big  enough  ?  Are 
they  inherently  long-story  ideas,  or  are 
they  foredoomed  never  to  be  anything 
more  than  short  stories?'*  This  point 
was  touched  upon  briefly  in  the  preceding 

[126] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  FORM 

chapter;  but  it  is  so  extremely  important 
to  the  individual  writer,  and  a  miscom- 
prehension of  it  has  led  so  many  beginners 
astray,  that  a  certain  amount  of  repetition 
seems  justifiable,  especially  as  it  paves  the 
way  to  another  thought  of  some  importance. 
The  greatest  mistake  that  a  young 
writer  can  make  is  that  of  thinking  of 
ideas  as  being  in  any  sense  a  lot  of  square 
pegs  that  must  not  be  placed  in  round 
holes,  or  vice  versa.  An  idea  is  not  fore- 
ordained to  any  exclusive  appropriation 
by  any  one  artistic  form;  it  is  not  inevi- 
tably the  beginning  of  a  sonnet  or  of  a 
four-act  drama,  any  more  than  a  ball  of 
yarn  is  necessarily  destined,  as  It  comes 
from  the  spinning-wheel,  either  for  an 
afghan  or  a  pair  of  stockings.  Ideas  are 
the  raw  material  of  literature;  what  they 
are  to  be  worked  into,  depends  not  upon 
the  ideas  themselves,  but  upon  the  indi- 
vidual author's  bent  of  mind,  the  way  in 
[127] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  FORM 

which  his  thoughts  naturally  take  shape. 
We  are  too  apt  to  think  of  a  thought,  a 
really  big  and  important  thought,  as  we 
think  of  a  precious  stone,  something  crys- 
tallised and  unyielding,  something  which 
^an  be  cut  and  polished,  to  be  sure,  but 
only  in  accordance  with  its  natural  angles 
and  lines  of  cleavage.  We  would  come 
nearer  the  truth  if  we  likened  ideas  to 
pure  gold  in  the  ingot,  that  may  be  worked 
into  any  shape,  applied  to  any  purpose, 
forming  the  standard  of  value  in  the  world 
of  letters,  yet  capable  of  being  spread  out 
to  infinitesimal  thinness,  In  order  to  give 
cheapness  the  glitter  of  a  spurious  worth. 
What  Is  wrought  from  the  Ingot  depends 
upon  the  skill  and  genius  of  the  gold- 
smith; It  IS  not  the  fault  of  the  elemental 
gold.  If,  instead  of  delicate  miracles  of  the 
jeweller's  art,  It  finds  Itself  debased  to  an 
electro  bath  for  Ten-Cent  Store  cuff-but- 
tons I 

[128] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  FORM 

It  follows  that  we  can  do  no  poorer 
service  to  a  young  writer  than  to  per- 
suade him  that  an  idea  which  he  has  al- 
ready seen  clearly  in  one  form,  must  not 
be  used  in  that  form,  but  for  something 
quite  different.  We  sometimes  hear  a 
young  poet  receive  advice,  somewhat  af- 
ter this  fashion :  "  Yes,  the  idea  that  you 
have  in  mind  for  a  sonnet  is  a  good  idea 
in  itself,  but  the  trouble  with  it  is  that  it 
is  not  a  sonnet  idea;  it  never  could  make 
a  good  sonnet ;  give  it  up  I  **  It  always 
seemed  to  me  that  it  must  take  an  uncom- 
mon amount  of  boldness  to  assume  such  a 
responsibility  as  that!  The  utmost  that 
anyone  has  a  right  to  say  is,  "  That  is  an 
idea  from  which  I,  myself,  could  not  make 
a  good  sonnet;  I,  individually,  cannot  see 
it  in  the  sonnet  form,"  or,  perhaps,  if  the 
intimacy  between  the  adviser  and  would- 
be  poet  justifies  this  attitude :  "  From 
what  I  know  of  your  previous  work,  I  can- 
[129] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  FORM 

not  believe  that  you  could  give  this  par- 
ticular Idea  the  adequate  treatment  and  de- 
velopment for  a  sonnet;  give  It  up,  not  on 
account  of  the  idea's  limitations,  but  be- 
cause of  your  own."  But  the  usual  and 
safe  rule  Is  that  every  writer  must  find  out 
for  himself  what  shape  he  may  best  give 
his  Ideas  —  and  thkt  is  why  It  is  generally 
wiser,  if  a  writer  has  critical  friends  whose 
advice  he  values,  to  get  his  start  by  him- 
self, have  his  first  draught  finished,  or 
at  least  well  advanced,  before  asking  for 
a  critical  opinion.  It  often  happens  that 
an  Idea  which,  when  presented  in  the 
rough,  seems  to  the  critic  quite  hopeless, 
becomes  with  even  a  slight  degree  of 
working-up,  not  only  promising,  but  tri- 
umphantly vindicated.  Think  how  absurd 
it  would  sound  to  say  to  a  goldsmith: 
"  Don't  try  to  make  a  ring  out  of  that 
piece  of  gold  wire;  there  Isn't  a  ring  in  that 
wire,  there  is  nothing  but  a  scarf-pin  I" 
[130] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  FORM 

Yet  that  is  precisely  the  sort  of  mislead- 
ing advice  that  is  not  infrequently  given 
to  story  writers.  Many  an  author  has 
wasted  months  on  a  bad  novel,  when  he 
could  have  used  the  same  idea  in  a  good 
short  story;  many  a  short  story  has  spoiled 
an  idea  that  might  have  served  for  a  bal- 
lad or  an  elegy,  or  a  musical  comedy  —  not 
because  there  was  any  incongruity  in  the 
ideas  themselves,  but  because  the  author 
failed  to  follow  his  natural  bent. 

But,  whatever  form  a  young  writer  uses, 
it  is  his  first  duty  to  master  the  technique 
of  that  form,  to  familiarise  himself  with 
its  entire  history,  to  learn  not  only  how  the 
best  authors  have  used  that  form  in  the 
past,  but  also  how  the  modern  generation 
is  modifying  it  to-day.  I  am  continually 
amazed  at  being  asked  by  beginners,  "  Isn't 
it  better  for  me  to  read  as  little  as  pos- 
sible of  contemporary  books?  Am  I  not 
in  danger  of  losing  my  originality  if  I  fill 

[131] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  FORM 

my  mind  with  the  ideas  of  others?  Is  it 
not  bad  for  my  style  to  read  any  books 
except  the  recognised  classics?"  Per- 
sonally, I  have  little  patience  with  such  an 
attitude  of  mind.  The  man  or  woman 
who  has  so  little  originality  or  inventive 
power  as  to  be  bewildered,  stunted,  over- 
whelmed by  contact  with  the  thoughts  of 
others,  offers  a  rather  hopeless  case  any- 
how; the  great  majority  of  normal  human 
beings  find  something  stimulating  rather 
than  deadening  in  wide  reading;  and  to 
the  craftsman  who  is  really  interested  in 
his  art  it  must  be  a  very  hopeless  book 
indeed  that  does  not  give  him  something 
upon  which  to  whet  his  inventive  faculty. 
The  very  imperfections  of  a  plot  in  any 
current  penny-dreadful  may  suggest,  by 
the  glaring  way  in  which  an  opportunity 
is  missed,  a  new  twist  that  might  be  given 
< —  and  so  you  have  the  starting  point  of  a 
new  and  perhaps  a  big  story.  And  in  any 
[132] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  FORM 

case  a  writer  cannot  afford  to  be  Ignorant 
of  what  is  being  done  to-day  in  his  own 
field.  Such  neglect  Is  only  a  few  degrees  / 
worse  than  for  a  lawyer  to  refuse  to  rec- 
ognise the  authority  of  a  case  decided 
later  than  1850,  or  for  a  physician  to  ig- 
nore modern  methods  of  treating  disease, 
lest  he  should  lose  the  originality  of  his 
own  methods.  The  comparison  is  not 
quite  so  far-fetched  as  perhaps  at  first 
sight  it  may  seem.  The  fact  that  there 
were  some  brilliant  surgeons  half  a  cen- 
tury ago  in  no  way  minimises  the  impor- 
tance of  the  antiseptic  methods  of  to-day; 
and  the  inclusion  of  Tom  Jones  and 
Roderick  Random  and  Tristram  Shandy 
among  the  English  classics  does  not  alter 
the  fact  that  there  exists  to-day  a  tech- 
nique of  fiction  such  as  was  not  remotely 
dreamed  of  by  Sterne  or  Smollett  or 
Fielding.  One  of  the  first  things  for  a 
beginner  to  learn,  if  he  would  master  the 

[133] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  FORM 

technique  of  form,  is  to  distinguish  be- 
tween the  writers  who  have  already  mas- 
tered it  and  those  who  have  become  great 
in  spite  of  poor  technique.  It  is  the  dif- 
ference between  a  rough  diamond  and  a 
polished  rhinestone — ^the  value  may  lie 
wholly  in  the  stone  or  wholly  in  the  cut- 
ting. But  best  of  all  is  the  author  who 
combines  a  flawless  technique  with  the 
greatness  of  genius  —  a  perfect  cutting 
and  a  perfect  stone. 

For  the  sake  of  being  specific,  let  us 
take  one  or  two  examples:  for  instance, 
the  case  of  a  young  writer  who  wishes  to 
learn  the  best  way  in  which  to  write  son- 
nets. Here,  as  everywhere  else,  there  is  a 
certain  measure  of  the  art  which  cannot  be 
taught.  If  he  has  not  the  inborn  instinct 
that  will  tell  him  what  thoughts  are  beau- 
tiful and  what  are  not;  if  he  has  not  a 
natural  sense  of  harmony  that  will  dis- 
tinguish between  a  pleasing  sequence  of 

[134] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  FORM 

sounds  and  a  discord,  it  is  rather  futile  to 
try  to  help  him.  But,  granted  that  he  pos-  , 
sesses  these  elemental  and  indispensable 
qualities,  the  first  thing  to  do,  of  course, 
is  to  put  him  in  the  way  of  knowing  what 
a  sonnet  is.  Now,  the  shortest  and  sim- 
plest —  I  was  on  the  point  of  saying,  the 
laziest  —  way  to  do  this  would  be  to  pick 
out  some  one  or  two  of  the  great  English 
sonnets,  Milton's  sonnet  on  his  blindness, 
or  Wordsworth's  sonnet  to  Milton,  and 
say  to  him:  "  Here  is  your  model;  study 
the  verse  scheme  and  try  to  do  something 
like  it."  And  of  course  the  student  in 
question  would  be  no  more  fitted  for  writ- 
ing a  sonnet  than  a  child  is  prepared  to 
read  when  it  has  mastered  only  the  letter  a. 
What  he  ought  to  do  is  to  learn  the  his- 
tory of  the  sonnet,  to  study  the  develop- 
ment of  its  form  with  all  permissible  vari- 
ations of  rhyme,  in  Italian  as  well  as  in 
English;    to    know    in    what   respect    the 

[135] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  FORM 

Shakespearean  sonnets  differ  from  those 
of  Milton,  and  his  again  from  Keats  or 
Rossetti.  He  should  know  what  consti- 
tutes a  perfectly  regular  sonnet  and  what 
are  its  pardonable  irregularities.  Then, 
and  not  till  then,  he  is  qualified  to  pass 
judgment  upon  a  sonnet,  either  his  own 
or  those  of  others  —  and,  it  may  be,  is  ca- 
pable of  producing  a  sonnet  good  enough 
to  be  given  to  the  world  at  large. 

Or  let  us  take  another  and  far  com- 
moner case,  that  of  the  would-be  writer 
whose  interest  lies  mainly  in  fiction.  It 
does  not  matter  whether  he  prefers  the 
short-story  form  or  that  of  the  novel;  his 
training  in  either  case  will  be  practically 
the  same.  What  he  needs  most  is  a  pa- 
tient study  of  the  authors  who  have  paid 
strict  attention  to  the  technique  of  form: 
in  English,  Henry  James  and  Mr.  How- 
ells,  Kipling  and  Hewlett,  Gissing  and 
George  Moore  are  only  a  few  whose  meth- 

[136] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  FORM 

ods  when  properly  understood  are  full  of 
Illuminating  suggestion.  And  the  French 
are  in  this  respect  especially  helpful,  far 
more  so  than  the  Russians:  Turgeneff 
himself  is  reported  by  Henry  James  to 
have  confessed  frankly  in  conversation 
that  one  fault  of  his  own  work  was  ''  que 
cela  manque  d*  architecture.  But,"  he 
added,  "  I  would  rather,  I  think,  have  too 
little  architecture  than  too  much, —  when 
there  is  danger  of  Its  interfering  with  my 
measure  of  the  truth.  The  French  of 
course  like  more  of  it  than  I  give, —  hav- 
ing by  their  own  genius  such  a  hand  for 
it;  and  Indeed  one  must  give  all  one  can." 
There  are  probably  no  two  novelists  to 
whom  the  architecture,  the  underlying  and 
hidden  framework  of  the  plot,  means  pre- 
cisely the  same  thing,  or  who  have  anything 
like  the  same  method  of  developing  it. 
Each  writer  must  learn  by  experience  what 
method  brings  him  Individually  the  best  re- 
[137] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  FORM 

suits.  One  man  may  prefer  to  carry  the 
rough  outline  of  the  plot  in  his  head;  an- 
other can  do  nothing  without  an  elaborate 
scenario;  a  third  prefers  a  diagram,  with 
lines  crossing  and  Intercrossing,  to  show  the 
points  at  which  the  lives  of  the  different 
characters  Intersect.  Nothing  would  be 
more  helpful  than  a  collection  of  confes- 
sions from  our  leading  novelists  as  to  just 
how  their  plots  were  built  up,  step  by  step. 
Here,  for  instance,  is  a  curious  sidelight 
from  Henry  James's  preface  to  The  Awk- 
ward Age^  that  has  already  given  several 
suggestive  Illustrations  to  these  articles  : 

I  remember  that  in  sketching  my  project  ( The 
Awkward  Age)  I  drew  on  a  sheet  of  paper 
.  .  .  the  neat  figure  of  a  circle  consisting  of 
a  number  of  small  rounds  disposed  at  equal 
distances  about  a  central  object.  The  central 
object  was  my  situation,  to  which  the  thing  would 
owe  its  title,  and  the  small  rounds  represented 
so  many  distinct  lamps,  as  I  liked  to  call  them, 

[138] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  FORM 

the  function  of  each  of  which  would  be  to  light 
with  all  due  intensity  one  of  its  aspects.  .  .  . 
Each  of  my  "  lamps  "  would  be  the  light  of  a 
"  single  social  occasion  '*  in  the  history  and  inter- 
course of  the  characters  concerned,  and  would 
bring  out  to  the  full  the  latent  colour  of  the 
scene  in  question,  and  cause  it  to  illustrate,  to 
the  last  drop,  its  bearing  on  my  theme. 

The  whole  world  knows  Emile  Zola's 
elaborate  system  of  **  documentation,"  the 
long  and  toilsome  preparation  that  he  went 
through  before  writing  even  the  first  para- 
graph of  his  opening  chapter.  If,  for  in- 
stance, he  was  going  to  write  a  novel  on 
the  life  of  the  theatre,  so  he  once  told  that 
indefatigable  Italian  traveller  and  story 
teller,  Edmondo  de  Amicis,  he  would  be- 
gin by  jotting  down  all  that  he  could  re- 
member of  his  own  personal  experience  in 
regard  to  plays  and  playwrights,  theatrical 
managers  and  actors;  he  would  then  secure 
all  the  books  he  could  find  that  bore  upon 

[139] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  FORM 

the  subject,  would  consult  friends  regard- 
ing their  experiences,  carefully  noting  down 
all  the  details  and  anecdotes  they  could 
give  him.  Then  he  would  secure  letters 
of  introduction  to  leading  members  of  the 
theatrical  world,  spending  long  hours  in 
the  Green  Room  and  at  rehearsals,  saturat- 
ing himself  with  the  spirit  and  the  atmos- 
phere of  the  stage.  And  out  of  all  this, 
the  plot  would  little  by  little  take  form, 
almost  unconsciously. 

According  to  Zola,  this  method  was  by 
no  means  peculiar  to  himself,  but  was 
very  much  the  method  of  Alphonse 
Daudet  as  well;  and  Daudet  himself  has 
told  frankly  of  a  certain  little  green  note- 
book from  whose  pages  came  Numa  Ron- 
mestan  and  certain  other  stories  besides. 
But  unlike  Zola,  Daudet  admitted  that  he 
could  not  always  control  the  details  of  his 
plots  and  that  there  were  times  when  the 

[140] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  FORM 

story  took  the  matter  into  its  own  hands,  in 
spite  of  him.  Speaking,  for  instance,  of 
the  criticism  against  the  commonplace  death 
from  consumption  of  one  of  the  characters 
in  Numa  Roumestan,  he  gives  the  follow- 
ing explanation: 

But  why  consumptive?  Why  that  sentimental 
and  romantic  death,  that  commonplace  contriv- 
ance to  arouse  the  reader's  emotion?  Why,  be- 
cause one  has  no  control  over  his  work;  because, 
during  its  gestation,  when  the  idea  is  tempting 
us  and  haunting  us,  a  thousand  things  become 
involved  in  it,  dragged  to  the  surface  and  gath- 
ered en  route,  at  the  pleasure  of  the  hazards  of 
life,  as  sea-weed  becomes  entangled  in  the  meshes 
of  a  net.  When  I  was  carrying  Numa  in  my 
brain  I  was  sent  to  take  the  waters  at  Allevard; 
and  there,  in  the  public  rooms,  I  saw  youthful 
faces,  drawn,  wrinkled,  as  if  carved  with  a  knife ; 
I  heard  poor,  expressionless,  husky  voices,  hoarse 
coughs,  followed  by  the  same  furtive  movement 
with  the  handkerchief  or  the  glove,  looking  for 

[141] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  FORM 

the  red  spot  at  the  corner  of  the  lips.  Of  those 
pallid,  impersonal  ghosts,  one  took  shape  in  my 
book,  as  if  in  spite  of  me,  with  the  melancholy 
curriculum  of  the  watering  place  and  its  lovely 
pastoral  surroundings,  and  it  has  all  remained 
there. 

It  IS  somewhat  difficult  to  give  general 
advice  regarding  the  best  way  to  study  the 
technique  of  form  in  fiction.  The  method 
of  diagramming  is  certainly  full  of  sug- 
gestive surprises.  I  have  myself  gained 
some  rather  happy  results  In  the  way  of 
discovering,  where  one  of  my  lines  trailed 
off  Into  space  like  a  lost  comet,  that  the 
particular  character  which  that  line  repre- 
sented had  little  or  no  structural  importance 
In  the  story.  But  to  a  good  many  writers 
the  diagram  method  would  be  of  Infinitely 
more  trouble  than  help.  To  them  I  would 
give  the  more  general  advice,  to  try  and 
think  of  their  art  In  terms  of  painting;  to 
think  of  the  story  they  have  to  tell  as  being 
[142] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  FORM 

a  picture  that  they  are  to  put  upon  canvas ; 
and  that,  like  any  other  picture,  it  must  be 
subject  to  the  ordinary  laws  of  perspective, 
—  all  of  which  has  been  quite  admirably 
expressed  in  the  following  paragraph  by 
Trollope : 

*'  But,"  the  young  novelist  will  say,  "  with  so 
many  pages  to  be  filled,  how  shall  I  succeed  if 
I  thus  confine  myself?  How  am  I  to  know  be- 
forehand what  space  this  story  of  mine  will  re- 
quire? .  •  .  If  I  may  not  be  discursive 
should  the  occasion  require,  how  shall  I  complete 
my  task?  The  painter  suits  the  size  of  his  can- 
vas to  his  subject,  and  must  I  in  my  art  stretch 
my  subject  to  my  canvas?  "  This  must  undoubt- 
edly be  done  by  the  novelist ;  and  if  he  will  learn 
his  business,  may  be  done  without  injury  to  his 
effect.  He  may  not  paint  different  pictures  on 
the  same  canvas,  which  he  will  do  If  he  allows 
himself  to  wander  away  to  matters  outside  his 
own  story;  but  by  studying  proportion  in  his 
work,  he  may  teach  himself  so  to  tell  his  story 

[143] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  FORM 

that  it  shall  naturally  fall  into  the  required 
length.  Though  his  story  should  be  all  one,  yet 
it  may  have  many  parts.  Though  the  plot  itself 
may  require  but  few  characters,  it  may  be  so  en- 
larged as  to  find  its  full  development  in  many. 
There  may  be  subsidiary  plots,  v^^hich  shall  all 
tend  to  the  elucidation  of  the  main  story,  and 
which  will  take  their  places  as  part  of  one  and 
the  same  work  —  as  there  may  be  many  figures 
on  a  canvas  which  shall  not  to  the  spectator  seem 
to  form  themselves  into  separate  pictures. 

Now,  if  you  cultivate  the  habit  of  think- 
ing of  fiction  In  the  terms  of  painting,  the 
first  question  that  you  are  likely  to  ask  of 
each  book  that  you  read  is :  At  what  point 
did  the  artist  set  up  his  easel;  from  what 
angle  did  he  see  his  story?  Did  he  look 
down  upon  his  little  world  from  some  high 
eminence  with  the  all-seeing  eye  of  Omnis- 
cience; or  did  he  deliberately  limit  the 
range  of  vision  to  a  definite  angle,  a  single 
street  or  room,  or  only  so  much  of  life  as 
[H4] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  FORM 

falls  beneath  the  eyes  of  one  of  his  own 
characters?  When  the  technique  of  fiction 
was  in  its  infancy,  these  various  methods 
were  indiscriminately  used ;  but  now  we  de- 
mand of  an  author  first  of  all  that  he  shall 
be  consistent.  If  he  professes  to  tell  us,  as 
Mr.  James  did,  What  Maisie  Knew,  we 
would  have  a  perfect  right  to  resent  being 
told  anything  that  Maisie  did  not  know; 
if  we  are  to  see  a  story  solely  from  the  out- 
side point  of  view, —  and  Verga's  Caval- 
leria  Rusticana  is  probably  as  perfectly  con- 
sistent a  piece  of  work  of  that  sort  as  was 
ever  produced,  being  so  wholly  objective 
that  it  has  the  effect  of  a  moving-picture, — 
then  we  might  resent  with  equal  right  any 
attempt  to  get  inside  of  a  character's  brain 
and  to  tell  us  what  he  is  thinking  of.  Sec- 
ondly, having  found  out  the  author's  point 
of  view,  we  want  to  ask  ourselves  what  the 
size  of  his  canvas  is:  how  big  a  story  he 
has  to  tell  and  what  are  his  dimensions  in 

[145] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  FORM 

point  of  time  as  well  as  space.  There  are 
a  hundred  ways  of  telling  any  story.  Don't 
make  the  mistake  of  assuming  that  the  au- 
thor has  necessarily  chosen  the  best  way. 
You  are  entitled  to  your  own  opinion;  try 
to  find  out  for  yourself  just  why  he  began 
his  story  where  he  did,  why  he  spread  it 
over  a  certain  range  of  days  and  of  miles, 
why  he  had  nine  characters  instead  of 
eleven,  or  fifty-seven  instead  of  forty-three, 
—  in  other  words,  when  dealing  with  a 
modern  novel  by  an  author  whose  tech- 
nique is  supposedly  good,  cultivate  the 
habit  of  assuming  that  the  novel  contains 
nothing,  not  even  of  the  most  trivial  char- 
acter, that  was  not  the  result  of  some  de- 
liberate purpose,  carefully  calculated  to 
play  its  part  in  the  design  of  the  book  as  a 
whole.  Unfortunately,  you  will  run  across 
many  things  in  the  novels  of  even  the  best 
craftsmen  that  are  not  the  result  of  any 
such  careful  planning;  and  you  will  even 

[146] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  FORM 

more  frequently  find  carefully  planned  ef- 
fects which  have  failed  of  their  purpose. 
And  whenever  you  do  run  across  a  clear 
case  of  miscalculation,  congratulate  your- 
self upon  your  discovery;  for  you  can  gen- 
erally learn  a  more  valuable  and  lasting 
lesson  from  the  blunder  of  a  better  crafts- 
man than  yourself  than  you  can  from  a 
dozen  of  the  same  writer's  successes. 

Yet  all  this  advice  is  quite  futile  if  the 
student  of  craftsmanship  cannot  bring  to 
his  task  a  certain  degree  of  intelligence 
and  plodding  patience.  A  sort  of  half 
understanding  of  the  authors  you  study 
becomes  that  dangerous  thing  which  we 
are  told  is  the  penalty  attached  at  all 
times  to  a  little  knowledge.  Unintelli- 
gent imitation  will  often  render  grotesque 
what  would  otherwise  have  been  a  really 
good  piece  of  work.  A  short  time  ago 
a  manuscript  came  into  my  hands  of  a 
story  carefully  written,  full  of  a  glow  of 

"    [147] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  FORM 

verbal  colour  and  up  to  a  certain  point 
not  without  interest.  It  was  plain  that  the 
writer  had  saturated  himself  with  the  im- 
aginative stores  of  the  French  school, 
such  as  Prosper  Merimee's  Venus  Ullle 
and  Gautier^s  Pied  de  Momie.  He  had 
caught  the  trick  of  telling  a  story  which 
apparently  was  due  to  supernatural 
causes,  yet  could,  if  the  reader  preferred, 
be  explained  on  simple  and  rational 
grounds.  The  story  was  somewhat  after 
this  sort:  there  was  a  fantastic  piece  of 
jewelry  from  which  a  single  gem  was 
missing;  the  jewelry  was  undoubtedly  of 
great  antiquity  and  it  possessed  mys- 
terious properties  calculated  to  inspire 
both  curiosity  and  awe.  The  missing  gem 
is  recovered  under  curious  circumstances, 
and  no  sooner  is  it  replaced  than  the  pos- 
sessor forthwith  goes  into  a  trance  and 
witnesses  very  vividly  a  painful  tragedy 
re-enacted  from  the  vanished  centuries. 
[148] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  FORM 

All  this  would  have  been  very  well  in- 
deed but  for  one  trifling  mistake;  the  his- 
torical scene  that  is  re-enacted  in  the  vi- 
sion was  (let  us  say)  the  death  of  Julius 
Caesar,  following  without  variation  the 
traditional  account.  Of  course,  as  a  mys- 
.tery  story,  the  purpose  was  defeated. 
The  moment  the  name  Cssar  was  men- 
tioned the  reader  knew  what  to  expect 
and  there  was  no  surprise  held  in  reserve. 
By  way  of  contrast  and  to  show  how  a 
story  based  upon  a  perfectly  familiar 
historical  incident  may  be  handled  in  or- 
der not  only  to  justify  itself  but  to  give 
the  keenest  possible  shock  of  surprise  at 
the  end,  one  has  only  to  recall  that  amaz- 
ing bit  of  irony  by  Anatole  France,  La 
Procurateur  de  Judee,  in  which  Pontius 
Pilate  is  talking  in  his  old  age  with  an- 
other Roman,  indulging  in  reminiscences 
of  his  long-ago  governorship  in  Palestine. 
Gradually,  the  friend  brings  up  one  mem- 
[149] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  FORM 

ory  after  another,  drawing  closer  and 
closer  to  the  crowning  event  that  has 
stamped  itself  upon  his  brain,  the  Cruci- 
fixion. Then  comes  the  ironic  surprise 
that  gives  the  story  its  peculiar  twist. 
Pontius  Pilate  shakes  his  head.  "  I  don^t 
remember,"  he  says  slowly.  *'  But  then, 
there  were  so  many  cases  brought  before 
me  in  those  years!  " 


[150] 


V 
THE  GOSPEL  OF  INFINITE  PAINS 


CHAPTER  V 

THE   GOSPEL   OF   INFINITE  PAINS 

It  was  the  Roman  poet,  Ovid,  who  once 
said,  at  least  in  substance,  "  It  is  a  fact 
that  some  authors  cannot  correct.  They 
compose  with  pleasure  and  with  ardour; 
but  they  exhaust  all  their  force.  They  fly 
with  but  one  wing,  when  they  revise  their 
work;  the  first  fire  does  not  return."  * 

What  was  true  in  Ovid's  day  has  been 
equally  true  in  all  periods  of  literary  pro- 
duction. There  are  always  certain  au- 
thors, eminently  brilliant  some  of  them, 
who  not  only  cannot  revise,  but  rather 
pride  themselves  on  their  inability  to  do 
so.     Byron,  for  instance,  is  a  striking  case 

*  Quoted  in  this  form  by  Disraeli,  Curiosities  of  Lit- 
erature, who  goes  on  to  cite  numerous  interesting  cases 
of  industrious  revision. 

C153] 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  INFINITE  PAINS 

in  point.  He  is  said  to  have  written  with 
astonishing  rapidity  —  The  Corsair  in  ten 
days,  The  Bride  of  Ahydos  in  four  days; 
while  it  was  printing  he  added  and  cor- 
rected, but  without  recasting.  To  quote 
his  own  words : 

I  told  you  before  that  I  can  never  recast  any- 
thing. I  am  like  the  tiger.  If  I  miss  the  first 
spring,  I  go  grumbling  back  to  my  jungle  again ; 
but  if  I  do  it,  it  is  crushing. 

Now,  the  ability  to  get  one's  thoughts 
upon  paper  with  great  rapidity  is  in  itself 
an  admirable  gift.  There  is  a  freshness, 
a  spontaneity,  and  oftentimes  a  crude 
strength  in  the  first  rough  draft  which 
must  inevitably  be  partly  sacrificed  in  the 
process  of  final  polishing.  There  is  a 
great  deal  of  truth  in  Thoreau's  advice: 

Write  while  the  heat  is  In  you.  When  the 
farmer  burns  a  hole  in  his  yoke,  he  carries  the  iron 

[154] 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  INFINITE  PAINS 

quickly  from  the  fire  to  the  wood,  for  every  mo- 
ment it  is  less  effectual  to  penetrate  it.  .  .  . 
The  writer  who  postpones  the  recording  of  his 
thoughts  uses  an  iron  which  has  cooled  to  burn  a 
hole  with.  He  cannot  influence  the  minds  of 
his  audience. 

"  Write  while  the  heat  is  in  you  "  is,  so 
far  as  it  goes,  excellent  advice.  Pages 
written  under  great  heat  and  pressure  are 
not  unlikely  to  turn  out  diamonds  in  the 
rough  —  for  this  is  Nature's  way  of  mak- 
ing diamonds.  The  trouble  with  the  ad- 
vice is  that  it  does  not  go  half  far  enough ; 
it  tells  only  half  the  truth;  it  fails  to  point 
out  that  all  the  fire  in  the  world  will  never 
do  the  effective  finishing,  or  add  the  final 
lustre,  like  a  little  slow  and  patient  rub- 
bing, after- the  ideas  have  grown  cold.  In 
other  words,  one  of  the  most  fatal  mistakes 
a  young  writer  can  make  is  in  thinking 
that  writing  is  just  a  matter  of  inspiration ; 

[155] 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  INFINITE  PAINS 

that  you  either  have  the  inborn  talent,  or 
you  have  not;  that  if  you  have  it,  you  need 
only  to  plunge  into  a  sort  of  vortex  of 
creative  energy,  a  fine  sibylline  frenzy  — 
and  your  inborn  talent  will  do  the  rest. 
That,  of  course,  is  arrant  nonsense,  and 
very  disastrous  nonsense,  as  well  —  be- 
cause, if  you  once  get  the  idea  firmly 
fixed  in  your  mind  that  a  masterpiece  can 
spring,  like  Pallas  Athene,  perfected  from 
its  author's  brain,  then  good-bye  to  all 
hope  for  that  honest  drudgery,  that  lov- 
ing patience  over  infinite  detail,  which  is 
such  an  essential  accompaniment  of  the 
creative  gift  that  it  almost  justifies  that 
threadbare  paradox  that  genius  is  the  art 
of  taking  infinite  pains. 

Now  this,  of  course,  is  precisely  what 
genius  is  not,  and  never  can  be,  in  litera- 
ture any  more  than  in  the  other  arts.  No 
amount  of  patient  juggling  with  the  con- 
tents of  unabridged  dictionaries  will  give 

[1563 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  INFINITE  PAINS 

birth  to  a  great  poem,  if  there  is  not  the 
inspiration  of  a  great  thought  back  of  it. 
The  statement  that  if,  according  to  the 
law  of  permutations,  you  toss  a  sufficient 
number  of  Greek  alphabets  up  in  the  air, 
and  keep  on  doing  so  for  a  sufficient 
number  of  times,  they  will  sooner  or  later 
come  down  arranged  to  form  the  text  of 
the  Iliad,  may  be  all  right  in  higher 
mathematics,  but  it  is  not  helpful  to  the 
Craftsmanship  of  Writing.  But  just  be- 
cause technique  will  not  produce  im- 
mortal epics  all  by  itself,  there  is  no 
sense  in  leaping  to  the  other  extreme, 
and  either  shirking  it  or  discarding  it 
altogether.  The  best  laid  stone-ballast 
railway  track  in  the  world  won*t  take  us 
anywhere  unless  we  run  trains  upon  it,  but 
that  is  no  reason  for  expecting  our  little 
intellectual  railway  trains  to  run  themselves 
without  any  guide  rails  at  all.  Undisci- 
plined genius  is  an  erratic,  irresponsible 

[157] 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  INFINITE  PAINS 

thing  that  people  may  admire  on  occasion, 
but  dare  not  trust,  for  they  never  know 
what  it  is  likely  to  do  next.  As  between 
two  artists  of  equal  inborn  talent  a  wise 
man  would  every  time  give  preference  to 
the  one  who,  in  addition  to  his  inborn  tal^ 
ent,  shows  the  best  command  of  that  tech' 
nical  part  of  craftsmanship  which  comes 
only  from  persistent  drilling.  This,  I 
take  it,  is  the  real  point  of  that  almost 
threadbare  story  of  how  Pope  Benedict 
IX.,  wishing  to  have  some  paintings 
executed  in  St.  Peter^s,  and  having  heard 
of  the  fame  of  the  Florentine,  Giotto, 
sent  for  some  specimen  or  design  by 
which  he  might  judge  Giotto's  work;  and 
how  Giotto,  with  a  turn  of  his  hand, 
made  a  perfectly  symmetrical  circle  and 
delivered  it  to  the  messenger,  saying, 
*'  This  is  my  design.'*  This  perfect  circle 
was  no  evidence  of  an  inborn  talent,  for 
nature  does  not  endow  any  one  of  us  at 

[158] 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  INFINITE  PAINS 

birth  with  the  power  of  making  perfect 
circles  —  whatever  she  may  do  for  spiders 
in  regard  to  equilateral  polygons.  But  it 
was  evidence  of  a  trained  hand,  a  perfect 
technique;  and  that  is  a  pretty  important 
matter  to  be  assured  of  if  you  are  order- 
ing work  done  by  a  genius,  whether  you 
happen  to  be  Pope  Benedict  IX.  or  any- 
body else. 

The  whole  point  of  this  illustration  of 
Giotto's  circle  is,  not  merely  that  it  is 
something  which  has  to  be  learned,  but  that 
the  learning  costs  an  infinitude  of  prac- 
tice. It  is  apparently  such  a  simple  thing 
to  do  and  yet  you  can  keep  on  trying  and 
trying,  day  after  day,  month  after  month; 
and  probably  never  in  the  whole  course 
of  your  life  reach  the  point  where  you 
won't  have  to  say,  "  Yes,  that  is  pretty 
good,  but  I  ought  to  do  better.'*  That  is 
precisely  the  feeling  that  a  conscientious 
craftsman  ought  to  have  in  regard  to  his 

[159] 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  INFINITE  PAINS 

writing.  He  may  or  may  not  be  satis- 
fied with  the  inspiration  behind  his  work. 
For  that,  there  Is  no  rule;  it  depends 
upon  the  individual  case.  But  in  regard 
to  the  technical  side,  it  would  be  well  if 
he  could  always  feel  that  it  would  be  pos- 
sible to  do  it  just  a  little  bit  better  — 
always  feel  that  there  is  some  one  per- 
fect way  of  building  the  structure  or 
rounding  the  sentence  that  elusively  keeps 
just  beyond  his  reach. 

Consequently,  one  of  the  first  ideas  that 
every  young  writer  should  promptly  get 
into  his  head  is  that,  whatever  degree  of 
talent  he  may  have,  there  is  no  escape  from 
a  certain  amount  of  tedious  drudgery,  if 
he  ever  expects  to  accomplish  anything  of 
real  importance.  It  does  not  follow  that 
the  man  who  frankly  says  that  he  cannot 
revise  his  work  after  it  is  once  written  Is 
necessarily  in  the  second  grade  of  author- 
ship, any  more  than  the  man  who  admits 

[1 60] 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  INFINITE  PAINS 

that  he  cannot  map  out  his  whole  work  in 
all  its  details  before  writing  his  opening 
sentence.  There  is  no  hard  and  fast  rule 
as  to  the  point  at  which  the  real  drudgery 
of  writing  shall  begin.  Some  authors  have 
served  their  time  in  the  ranks,  as  it 
were,  before  their  first  book  has  ever 
seen  print;  they  have  learned  their  craft 
pretty  thoroughly  by  a  thousand  abortive 
efforts  that  have  either  never  been  set 
down  on  paper  at  all  or  else  have  gone 
speedily  into  the  scrap-basket  or  the  fur- 
nace fire.  This  does  not  mean  that  they 
will  be  relieved  of  the  necessity  of  prun- 
ing and  polishing;  but  it  does  mean  that 
a  long  and  faithful  apprenticeship  reduces 
the  amount  of  such  detail  work  to  a  mini- 
mum. Then  again  some  writers  have 
the  trick  of  doing  most  of  their  verbal 
sand-papering  in  advance,  turning  and 
twisting  each  sentence  a  thousand  times  in 
their  brain,  before  ever  committing  it 
[i6i] 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  INFINITE  PAINS 

to  paper.  That,  when  we  stop  to  think 
of  it,  is  the  original,  the  natural  way  in 
which  literary  composition  was  evolved. 
The  primitive  sagas,  the  early  folk  tales 
were  all  slowly  crystallised  into  shape,  not 
only  before  they  were  reduced  to  writing, 
but  before  there  was  any  writing  into  which 
to  reduce  them. 

But  it  makes  no  difference  at  what  point 
an  author  gets  in  his  really  hard  work; 
there  can  be  no  definite  rules  laid  down  for 
preparation  or  for  revision.  There  is  no 
magic  in  a  second  re-writing  or  a  third,  in  a 
fifth  or  a  tenth  revised  proof.  If  the  first 
draft  of  your  sentence  satisfies  you,  a  sec- 
ond writing  is  a  waste  of  time.  But  fifty 
re-writings  are  none  too  much  if  the 
forty-ninth  still  fails  to  content  you. 
Every  writer  must  in  this  respect  work 
out  his  own  particular  method.  A  few 
years  ago  the  statement  went  the  rounds 
of  the  literary  columns  that  Mr.  Maurice 

[162] 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  INFINITE  PAINS 

Hewlett  made  a  practice  of  re-writing  all 
of  his  stories  no  less  than  four  times; 
that  each  of  these  drafts  was  made  with 
all  the  care  that  he  could  bestow  upon  it 
and  when  finished  promptly  destroyed; 
that  the  second  would  contain  only  so 
much  of  the  first  and  the  third  only  so 
much  of  the  second  as,  by  its  excellence 
or  its  striking  and  peculiar  phrasing, 
stamped  itself  upon  his  memory.  Whether 
or  not  he  really  works  in  that  way,  such  a 
method  would,  of  course,  account  for 
many  of  Mr.  Hewlett's  peculiarities  of 
style.  But  it  might  prove  extremely  dis- 
astrous to  another  author. 

Some  writers  apply  the  Gospel  of  In- 
finite Pains  from  the  first  moment  of 
their  conception  of  a  plot  down  to  the 
last  revision  of  the  page  proofs.  Balzac 
was  one  of  these.  His  erratic  and  la- 
boured methods  of  revision,  as  recorded 
by   Theophile    Gautier    in    his    Portraits 

[163] 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  INFINITE  PAINS 
Contemporains,  are  such  an  interesting 
object  lesson  of  the  extent  to  which  the 
fever  for  revision  may  be  carried  that  it 
seems  worth  while  to  quote  him  here 
rather  extensively : 

His  method  of  proceeding  was  as  follows: 
When  he  had  long  borne  and  lived  a  subject,  he 
wrote,  in  a  rapid,  uneven,  blotted,  almost  hiero- 
glyphic writing,  a  species  of  outline  on  several 
pages.  These  pages  went  to  the  printing  of- 
fice, from  which  they  were  returned  in  placards, 
that  is  to  say,  in  detached  columns  in  the  centre 
of  large  sheets.  He  read  these  proofs  attentively, 
for  they  already  gave  to  his  embryo  work  that 
impersonal  character  vi^hich  manuscript  never 
possesses;  and  he  applied  to  this  first  sketch  the 
great  critical  faculty  with  wrhich  he  was  gifted, 
precisely  as  though  he  were  judging  of  another 
man's  work. 

Then  he  began  operations:  approving  or  dis- 
approving, he  maintained  or  corrected,  but  above 
all   he  added.     .     .     .     After  some  hours,  the 

[164] 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  INFINITE  PAINS 

paper  might  have  been  taken  for  a  drawing  of 
fireworks  by  a  child.  Rockets,  darting  from  the 
original  text,  exploded  on  all  sides.  Then  there 
were  crosses:  simple  crosses,  crosses  re-crossed, 
like  those  of  a  blazon,  stars,  suns,  Arabic  figures, 
letters,  Greek,  Roman  or  French,  all  imaginable 
signs,  mingled  with  erasures.  Strips  of  paper, 
fastened  on  by  wafers  or  pins,  were  added  to  the 
insufficient  margins,  and  were  rayed  with 
lines  of  writing,  very  fine  to  save  room,  and 
full  themselves  of  erasures;  for  a  correction 
was  hardly  made  before  that  again  was  cor- 
rected.    .     .     . 

The  following  day,  the  proofs  came  back 
.  .  .  the  bulk  of  course  doubled.  Balzac  set 
to  work  again,  always  amplifying.  .  .  . 
Often  this  tremendous  labour  ended  with  an  in- 
tensity of  attention,  a  clearness  of  perception  of 
which  he  alone  was  capable.  He  would  see  that 
the  thought  was  warped  by  the  execution,  that  an 
episode  predominated;  that  a  figure  which  he 
meant  should  be  secondary  for  the  general  effect 
was  projecting  out  of  its  plan.     Then,  with  one 

[165] 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  INFINITE  PAINS 

stroke  of  his  pen,  he  bravely  annihilated  the  result 
of  four  or  five  nights  of  labour.  He  wsls  heroic 
at  such  times. 

Balzac,  of  course,  was  one  of  the  co- 
]ossals,  and  all  of  his  methods,  whether 
right  or  wrong,  were  colossal  like  himself. 
The  vast  majority  of  us  will  never  write 
a  Comedie  Humaine  nor  overspread  our 
proof   sheets    with   mad   pyrotechnics   of 
erasures.     Nevertheless,    the    essence    of 
Balzac's   method   is    a    sound   one.     You 
can  follow  no  better  plan,  provided  your 
mind  works  that  way,  than  to  get  your 
whole  initial  thought  down  on  paper  in 
the  first  heat  of  creation;  and  then,  after 
a  day  or  two,  re-write  and  amplify,  and 
re-write  and  amplify  again,  building  up, 
little  by  little,  filling  in  the  details,  smooth- 
ing the  rough  places  until  your  work  finally 
reaches  a  stage  that  you  are  content  to  keep 
as  its  permanent  form.     Yet  even  then,  if 
you  are  a  convert  to  the  Gospel  of  Infinite 
[i66] 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  INFINITE  PAINS 

Pains,  you  will  still  find  some  changes  to 
make  in  your  proof  sheets,  some  further 
amendment  to  work  into  your  second  an3 
third  editions. 

But,  of  course,  it  is  possible  to  carry 
anything  too  far,  even  such  an  apparently 
limitless  thing  as  Infinite  Pains.  Flau- 
bert was  the  signal  instance  of  this.  His 
pursuit  of  perfection  verged  upon  mania; 
his  tireless  zeal  in  connection  with  every 
detail  of  whatever  work  he  had  on  hand  for 
the  moment  was  in  the  nature  of  a  fixed 
idea.  Zola,  in  his  Romanciers  Natural- 
istes,  has  given  an  admirably  detailed  ac- 
count of  Flaubert's  methods  of  work  iri 
pursuit  of  "  that  perfection  which  made 
up  the  joy  and  the  torment  of  his  ex- 
istence." When  he  had  once  got  a  rough 
draft  upon  paper  the  "  chase  after  docu- 
ments "  began  with  as  much  method  as 
possible : 

He  read  above  all  a  considerable  number  of 

[167] 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  INFINITE  PAINS 

works;  or  rather  one  should  say  that  he  merely 
skimmed  them,  going  with  an  instinct  of  which 
he  was  rather  proud,  to  the  one  page,  the  one 
phrase  that  would  be  of  use  to  him.  Often  a 
work  of  five  hundred  pages  would  give  him  only 
a  single  note  which  he  painstakingly  transcribed ; 
often  also  such  a  volume  would  give  him  nothing 
at  all.  Here  we  find  an  explanation  of  the  seven 
years  which  he  spent  on  an  average  on  each  one 
of  his  books;  for  he  lost  at  least  four  in  his  pre- 
paratory readings. 

And  as  he  read,  his  notes  piled  up, 
overflowed  his  portfolios,  became  un- 
wieldy, mountainous.  To  give  some  idea 
of  his  conscientiousness  in  gathering  ma- 
terial, Zola  mentions  that  before  writing 
U Education  Sentimentale  he  ran  through 
the  entire  collection  of  Charivari,  in  or- 
der to  saturate  himself  with  the  spirit  of 
petty  journalism,  under  Louis-Philippe; 
and  that  it  was  out  of  the  words  found 
in  that  collection  that  he  created  the  char- 
[i68] 


THE  GOSPEL  OE  INFINITE  PAINS 

acter  of  Hussonnet.  At  last  an  hour 
would  come  when,  as  Flaubert  put  it,  he 
would  feel  the  "  need  of  writing  " : 

When  he  began  the  work  of  composition  he 
would  first  write  quite  rapidly  a  piece  consisting 
of  a  whole  episode,  five  or  six  pages  at  most. 
Sometimes,  when  the  right  word  would  not  come, 
he  would  leave  it  blank.  Then  he  would  start  in 
again  with  this  same  piece,  and  it  would  be  a 
matter  of  two  or  three  weeks,  sometimes  more,  of 
impassioned  labour  over  those  five  or  six  pages. 
He  wanted  them  perfect,  and  I  assure  you  that 
perfection  to  him  was  not  a  simple  matter.  He 
weighed  each  word,  examining  not  only  the  mean- 
ing but  the  conformation  as  well.  Avoidance  of 
repetitions,  of  rhymes,  of  harsh  sounds  was  merely 
the  rough  beginning  of  his  task.  He  went  so 
far  as  not  to  allow  the  same  syllables  to  recur  in 
a  phrase;  sometimes  a  single  letter  got  on  his 
nerves  and  he  would  search  for  words  in  which  it 
did  not  occur;  then  again  he  sometimes  had 
need  of  a  definite  number  of  r's  to  give  a  rolling 
effect  to  a  sentence. 

[1693 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  INFINITE  PAINS 

All  this  is  given  here  not  as  an  ex- 
ample to  be  imitated  by  the  young  literary 
craftsman  but  as  a  sort  of  ultimate  stand- 
ard by  which  to  measure  the  extent  and 
the  earnestness  of  his  own  efforts.  Your 
latest  story,  perhaps,  came  back  this 
morning  accompanied  by  its  third  rejec- 
tion slip.  In  writing  that  story  did  you 
take  the  trouble  to  work  it  over  for  the 
third  or  fourth  time?  Did  you  erase  and 
rearrange  the  opening  sentence  endlessly 
until  you  knew  all  its  possible  variations 
by  heart?  Did  you  wake  up  suddenly  in 
the  night  with  a  happy  idea  that  would 
just  fit  into  page  seventeen  and  could  not 
wait  till  morning?  —  or  did  you  on  the 
other  hand,  simply  sit  down  quite  com- 
fortably one  day,  possessed  only  of  pen, 
ink  and  paper  and  a  good  working  idea, 
and  dash  off  your  five  thousand  words  at 
top  speed  while  the  heat  that  Thoreau 
speaks  of  was  still  in  you?  And,  as  you 
[170] 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  INFINITE  PAINS 

signed  your  name,  did  you  say  to  youn 
self,  "  Well,  I  suppose  some  of  this  is  a 
bit  ragged,  but  it  will  have  to  go  as  it  is  "  ? 
If  the  second  is  the  case,  then  your  col- 
lection of  rejection  slips  deserves  to  multi- 
ply. You  may  be  a  genius,  but  you  are 
not  a  craftsman.  Better  a  hundred  times 
the  exaggeration,  the  hair-splittings,  the 
reductio  ad  absurdum  of  Flaubert's  Infi- 
nite Pains  than  such  deliberate  slovenli- 
ness. If  you  think  that  your  lot  is  a 
hard  one  and  that  literature  at  best  is  a 
steady  grind  with  slow  results,  read 
just  one  more  paragraph  on  Flaubert's 
method  and  perhaps  you  will  readjust  your 
ideas. 

One  Sunday  morning  (writes  Zola)  we  found 
him  drowsy,  broken  with  fatigue.  The  day  be- 
fore, in  the  afternoon,  he  had  finished  a  page  of 
Bouvard  et  Pecuchet,  with  which  he  felt  very 
much  pleased  and  he  had  gone  to  dine  in  town, 
after  having  copied  it  out  on  a  large  sheet  of  Hoi- 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  INFINITE  PAINS 

land  paper  that  he  was  accustomed  to  use.  When 
he  returned  about  midnight,  instead  of  retiring  at 
once,  he  had  to  give  himself  the  pleasure  of  re- 
reading that  page.  But  he  became  greatly  dis- 
turbed, discovering  that  he  had  repeated  himself 
within  a  space  of  two  lines.  Although  there  was 
no  fire  in  his  study  and  it  was  very  cold,  he  ob- 
stinately set  to  work  to  get  rid  of  that  repetition. 
Then,  finding  other  words  which  displeased  him, 
he  gave  up  the  attempt  to  change  them  all  and 
went  to  bed  in  despair.  But  once  in  bed,  it  was 
impossible  to  sleep;  he  turned  and  turned  again, 
thinking  always  of  those  devils  of  words.  All  at 
once  he  hit  upon  a  happy  correction,  sprang  to 
the  floor,  relighted  his  candle  and  returned  in  his 
night-shirt  to  his  study  to  write  out  the  new 
phrase.  After  that  he  crawled  back,  shivering 
beneath  the  coverlets.  Three  times,  he  sprang 
up  and  re-lighted  his  candle,  in  order  to  change 
the  position  of  a  word  or  to  alter  a  comma.  At 
last,  in  desperation,  dominated  by  the  demon  of 
perfection,  he  took  his  page  with  him,  bundled 
his  muffler  around  his  ears,  tucked  himself  in  on 
all  sides  in  his  bed  and  until  daybreak  cut  and 
[172] 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  INFINITE  PAINS 

pruned  his  page,  covering  it  all  over  w^ith  pencil 
strokes.  That  vi^as  the  way  Flaubert  vi^orked. 
We  all  have  manias  of  this  sort,  but  with  him  it 
was  this  sort  of  mania  from  one  end  of  his  books 
to  the  other. 

It  is  somewhat  of  a  comfort  to  turn 
from  a  writer  whose  efforts  were  so  vastly 
in  excess  of  the  bulk  of  his  actual  produc- 
tion and  take  up  another  novelist  who  holds 
a  fairly  eminent  position  in  English  litera- 
ture and  who,  through  long  years  of  re- 
markable average  fertility,  succeeded  in 
making  the  quality  of  his  writing  keep 
steady  pace  with  the  quantity — -Anthony 
Trollope.  His  advice  to  young  writers  is 
not  only  interesting  but  valuable,  provided 
it  be  taken  understandingly.  It  has  seemed 
worth  while  to  quote  from  him  rather  often 
in  these  pages.  Here  is  still  another  pas- 
sage that  is  apropos : 

Nulla  dies  sine  linea.    Let  that  be  their  motto, 
[173] 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  INFINITE  PAINS 

And  let  their  work  be  to  them  as  is  his  common 
work  to  the  common  labourer.  No  gigantic 
efforts  will  then  be  necessary.  He  need  tie  no 
wet  towels  round  his  brow,  nor  sit  for  thirty 
hours  at  his  desk  without  moving, —  as  men  have 
sat,  or  said  that  they  have  sat.  More  than  nine- 
tenths  of  my  literary  work  has  been  done  in  the 
last  twenty  years,  and  during  twelve  of  those 
years  I  followed  another  profession.  I  have 
never  been  a  slave  to  this  work,  giving  due  time, 
if  not  more  than  due  time,  to  the  amusements  I 
have  loved.  But  I  have  been  constant, —  and 
constancy  in  labour  will  conquer  all  difficulties. 
Gutta  cavat  lapidem  non  vi,  sed  saepe  cadendo. 

Steady,  plodding  work:  that  is  Trol- 
lope's  panacea  for  success  in  literature. 
*'  Let  their  work  be  to  them  as  is  his  work 
to  the  common  labourer,"  that  is  the  one 
phrase  to  be  treasured  up  and  committed 
to  memory.  The  art  of  writing  —  that  is 
the  part  that  savours  of  genius,  the  part 
for  which  we  cannot  prescribe  rules,  the 

[174] 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  INFINITE  PAINS 

part  which  makes  laws  unto  Itself.  But  the 
craftsmanship  Is  a  different  matter.  It  may 
be  congenial  labour,  but  labour  it  must  al- 
ways be,  differing  in  kind  but  not  In  de- 
gree from  that  of  the  hewer  of  wood  or 
the  tiller  of  the  field.  The  great  thing  is 
to  make  it  honest  labour,  to  be  quite  sure 
that  we  are  not  skimping  it  or  doing  It 
grudgingly.  We  must  each  of  us  find  our 
own  best  working  hours,  must  decide  for 
ourselves  whether  we  will  sit  thirty  hours 
at  a  stretch  without  moving,  and  then  do 
nothing  more  for  a  week,  or  whether  we 
will  accept  the  monotony  of  systematic 
daily  effort  from  breakfast  until  luncheon, 
day  in  and  day  out,  whether  we  feel  like 
it  or  not.  Some  men  can  work  that  way, 
and  some  men  cannot :  and  that  is  all  there 
is  about  It;  they  cannot  tell  you  why,  they 
simply  find  that  that  is  their  individual 
case.  Now,  there  is  no  virtue  in  one  way 
more    than    in    another  ^ — ^but    whatever 

[175] 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  INFINITE  PAINS 

method  of  work  you  follow  remember  al- 
ways that  there  Is  no  such  thing  as  a  royal 
road  to  literary  achievement,  that  it  always 
means  sooner  or  later  work,  work  of  the 
hardest,  most  earnest  sort,  and  often  the 
hardest  of  all  work  where  It  shows  the 
least.  For  the  greatest  triumph  of  writ- 
ing, as  of  other  arts.  Is  to  conceal  most 
carefully  those  spots  upon  which  you  have 
most  conscientiously  practised  the  Gospel 
of  Infinite  Pains. 


ri7«] 


VI 
THE  QUESTION  OF  CLEARNESS 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  QUESTION  OF  CLEARNESS 

We  have  seen  in  an  earlier  chapter  that 
the  first  step  towards  good  craftsmanship 
is  to  have  a  clear  underlying  purpose,  and 
also  that  the  resulting  written  work  will  be 
judged  largely  in  accordance  with  the  de- 
gree of  nearness  that  it  has  attained  in 
carrying  that  purpose  out.  But  it  is  neces- 
sary to  remember  always  that  your  book 
will  be  judged  not  according  to  the  pur- 
pose as  you  have  formulated  it  somewhere 
in  the  background  of  your  own  brain,  but 
as  you  have  expressed  it  in  your  written 
words.  There  is  small  use  in  having  any 
underlying  purpose  at  all  until  you  have 
learned  how  to  convey  your  meaning  to 
others, — in  other  words,  until  you  have 

[179] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  CLEARNESS 

learned  the  paramount  importance  of  clear- 
ness. 

Clearness  is  so  inseparable  an  element  of 
all  good  writing  that  many  a  critic  and 
rhetorician  has  regarded  it  as  a  term  almost 
synonymous  with  that  illusive  quality  called 
style.  Professor  A.  S.  Hill,  for  instance, 
who  for  so  many  years  occupied  the  chair 
of  English  at  Harvard  University,  chose 
to  divide  style  under  three  heads :  to  the  in- 
tellectual quality  of  style  he  gave  the  name, 
"  Clearness;  "  to  the  emotional,  "  Force;  " 
and  to  the  aesthetic,  "  Elegance."  And 
many  another  teacher  of  rhetoric  has  sim- 
ilarly invented  his  own  special  classifica- 
tion and  definition.  But  according  to  the 
ordinary  and  common  sense  understanding 
of  the  terms,  clearness  is  not  so  much  an 
element  of  style  as  it  is  a  condition  prece- 
dent to  it,  just  as  health  is  not  beauty,  but 
a  condition  precedent  to  beauty.  Clear- 
ness may  be  that  crystal  transparency  of 
[i8o] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  CLEARNESS 

word  and  phrase  that  belongs  to  finished 
art,  or  it  may  be  the  mere  dry  bones  of  fact 
picked  clean  of  the  last  shred  and  frag- 
ment of  adornment.  For  example,  a  wash- 
ing list  or  a  recipe  for  making  Dill  pickles 
may  be  perfectly  clear,  but  there  is  a  mani- 
fest absurdity  in  speaking  of  either  as  pos- 
sessing style.  But  whether  the  dividing 
line  between  clearness  and  style  is  vague  or 
sharply  defined,  there  can  be  no  question 
that  if  one  must  choose  between  the  two 
evils  it  is  far  better  to  sacrifice  the  second 
of  these  qualities  than  the  first.  The 
writer  who  has  said  something  definite 
and  intelligible  has  achieved  a  tangible  re- 
sult even  though  he  may  have  said  it  very 
badly ;  but  the  writer  whose  meaning  is  ob- 
scure has  accomplished  nothing  at  all,  how- 
ever well  balanced  and  harmonious  his 
phrases  may  sound.  It  is  well  to  remem- 
ber that  the  true  function  of  words,  like 
that  of  all  building  materials,  is  to  be  use- 
[i8i] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  CLEARNESS 

ful  first  and  ornamental  afterwards;  and 
that  for  the  greater  part  of  what  we  have 
to  say  the  simplest  phrasing  is  the  best,  just 
as  the  really  well  dressed  man  is  he  whose 
clothes  possess  that  quiet  refinement  which 
does  not  obtrude.  But  a  scorn  of  flamboy- 
ant neckties  and  checkerboard  trousers  is 
no  excuse  for  going  to  the  opposite  extreme 
of  a  blue  flannel  shirt  and  overalls;  and 
when  Stendhal  in  his  intolerance  of  over 
elaboration  and  rhetorical  flourish  boasted 
that  he  formed  his  own  style  by  daily  read- 
ings of  the  Civil  Code,  he  erred  as  badly 
on  his  side  as  the  models  he  avoided  erred 
on  theirs.  The  best  evidence  that  you  are 
in  sound  bodily  health  is  that  it  does  not 
occur  to  you  to  think  about  it;  and  sim- 
ilarly a  healthy  literary  style  is  that  which 
does  nothing  overtly  to  direct  our  attention 
to  it. 

Now  it  seems  as  though  the  quality  of 
clearness  ought  to  need  no  definition;  as 

[182] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  CLEARNESS 

though  anyone  possessed  of  normal  under- 
standing ought  to  grasp  the  fact  that  it  sim- 
ply denotes  the  ability  to  express  in  words 
any  particular  thought  that  you  may  have 
shaped  in  your  mind  and  to  express  it  in 
such  succinct  and  unmistakable  terms  that 
any  reader  of  ordinary  intelligence  will  re- 
ceive in  his  own  brain  a  faithful  image  of 
that  thought  and  be  able  at  request  to  mir- 
ror it  faithfully  back  to  you  in  his  own 
words.  Yet,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  clearness 
is  a  quality  that  is  either  very  much  misun- 
derstood or  else  quite  wantonly  disre- 
garded. There  are  a  large  number  of 
writers,  and  able  writers  too,  who  seem  to 
think  that  they  are  quite  clear  enough  if 
they  get  their  thoughts  down  in  a  form 
capable  of  being  understood  by  the  reader 
who  goes  to  work  to  extract  the  meaning 
with  something  of  that  energy  with  which 
one  applies  the  nut-cracker  to  a  refractory 
nut.     This   whole    question    of    clearness 

[183] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  CLEARNESS 

has  been  so  admirably  discussed  by  An- 
thony TroUope  in  his  Autobiography  that 
I  cannot  do  a  greater  service  to  young  writ- 
ers than  by  quoting  It  In  Its  entirety: 

Any  writer  who  h^  read  even  a  little  will 
know  what  is  meant  by  the  word  intelligible. 
It  is  not  sufficient  that  there  be  a  meaning  that 
may  be  hammered  out  of  the  sentence,  but  that 
the  language  should  be  so  pellucid  that  the 
meaning  should  be  rendered  without  an  effort 
of  the  reader;  —  and  not  only  some  proposition 
of  meaning,  but  the  very  sense,  no  more  and  no 
l^ss,  which  the  writer  has  intended  to  put  into 
his  words.  What  Macaulay  says  should  be  re- 
membered by  all  writers :  "  How  little  the  all- 
important  art  of  making  meaning  pellucid  is 
studied  now!  Hardly  any  popular  author  ex- 
cept myself  thinks  of  it."  The  language  used 
should  be  as  ready  and  as  efficient  a  conductor 
of  the  mind  of  the  writer  to  the  mind  of  the 
reader  as  the  electric  spark  which  passes  from 
one  battery  to  another  battery.     In  all  written 

[184] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  CLEARNESS 

matter  the  spark  should  carry  everything;  but 
in  matters  recondite  the  recipient  will  search  to 
see  that  he  misses  nothing,  and  that  he  takes 
nothing  away  too  much.  The  novelist  cannot 
expect  that  any  such  search  will  be  made.  A 
young  writer,  who  will  acknowledge  the  truth 
of  what  I  am  saying,  will  often  feel  himself 
tempted  by  the  difficulties  of  language  to  tell 
himself  that  some  one  little  doubtful  passage, 
some  single  collocation  of  words,  which  is  not 
quite  what  it  ought  to  be,  will  not  matter.  I 
know  well  what  a  stumbling-block  such  a  pas- 
sage may  be.  But  he  should  leave  nothing  be- 
hind him  as  he  goes  on.  The  habit  of  writing 
clearly  soon  comes  to  the  writer  who  is  a  severe 
critic  to  himself. 

As  a  broad  generalization,  the  conclud- 
ing words  of  the  above  passage  may  be  ac- 
cepted as  true  enough  in  the  case  of  the 
writer  who  has  learned  self-criticism  and 
whose  fault  lies  simply  in  a  careless  or 
slovenly   use    of   English.     But    unfortu- 

[185] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  CLEARNESS 

nately  there  are  many  kinds  and  grades  of 
obscurity  ranging  all  the  way  from  the  ob- 
scurity of  Ignorance  and  stupidity  to  the 
obscurity  that  comes  of  too  much  learning 
and  of  halr-splltting  analysis, —  all  the  way 
from  an  inability  to  think  clearly  down  to 
an  erudition  with  which  the  reader  cannot 
keep  pace.  There  is  nothing  to  be  gained 
by  classifying  and  distinguishing,  after  the 
fashion  of  a  school  rhetoric,  the  various 
kinds  of  obscurity  that  it  is  possible  to  find 
in  literature, —  by  dividing  what  is  ambig- 
uous from  what  is  vague  and  again  what  Is 
vague  from  what  Is  really  obscure ;  because, 
while  it  is  possible  to  make  such  a  classifi- 
cation to  almost  any  degree  of  minuteness 
that  you  choose,  all  these  different  kinds  of 
verbal  turbidness  go  back  to  one  or  more  of 
the  four  primal  causes  that  stand  in  the 
way  of  clearness;  and  the  important  thing 
is  to  get  these  four  causes  definitely  in  our 
minds, 

[i86] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  CLEARNESS 

The  simplest  way  in  which  to  approach 
the  whole  question  is  to  recognize  that 
when  we  write  a  book  or  a  magazine  ar- 
ticle we  are  under  a  sort  of  implied  ^  con- 
tract to  the  class  of  readers  whom  we  are 
trying  to  reach, —  that  we  have  pledged 
ourselves  to  tell  them  something  which  we 
assume  that  they  want  to  know.  Now,  in 
order  to  fulfil  this  obligation,  we  must 
bring  about  what  the  legal  fraternity  are 
fond  of  speaking  of  as  "  a  meeting  of 
minds," —  and  of  course  there  can  be  no 
meeting  of  minds  unless  we  have  learned 
to  write  intelligibly.  There  is  no  implied 
contract  to  write  with  any  specified  degree 
of  form  and  elegance,  any  more  than  there 
is  any  agreement  on  the  part  of  the  express 
company  which  delivers  the  book  or  mag- 
azine to  bring  it  in  an  automobile  or  a 
coach-and-four.  The  express  company 
simply  agrees  to  deliver  the  goods;  and 
when  we  write,  we  agree,  first  of  all,  to 

[187] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  CLEARNESS 

deliver  the  ideas,  and  if  we  are  obscure  we 
have  not  delivered  them. 

Now  in  order  that  the  minds  of  author 
and  reader  shall  meet,  there  are  four  con- 
ditions requisite :  first,  that  the  author  shall 
know  what  he  is  trying  to  say ;  second,  that 
he  shall  be  able  to  say  it  In  the  simplest 
terms;  third,  that  his  language  shall  be 
adapted  to  the  requirement  of  his  readers ; 
fourth,  that  his  thoughts  shall  not  be  be- 
yond their  range  of  comprehension.  Per- 
haps you  have  been  criticised  for  your  want 
of  clearness  and  you  come  to  me  for  help. 
The  first  thing  to  find  out  is  which  of  the 
above  four  requisites  is  your  stumbling- 
block.  Of  course,  if  the  trouble  comes 
from  the  first,  an  inability  to  think  clearly; 
If  your  thoughts  are  a  muddle,  if  you  are 
too  lazy  to  straighten  them  out,  there  is  no 
use  in  talking  to  you  about  how  to  write 
clearly.  There  Is  no  use  In  expecting  clear- 
ness from  a  slough;  and  the  more  accu- 
[i88] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  CLEARNESS 

rately  you  succeed  in  mirroring  back  your 
own  mental  attitude  the  more  hopelessly 
turbid  what  you  write  Is  bound  to  be.  The 
first  thing  to  do  Is  to  try  to  guide  your 
thoughts  Into  a  straight  channel  and  get 
them  gradually  Into  the  habit  of  flowing 
deep  and  clear, —  somewhat  after  the  fash- 
Ion  that  marshlands  are  redeemed  by  a  sys- 
tem of  irrigation  ditches.  Your  trouble 
may  be  simply  Inexperience,  or  laziness ;  or 
again  it  may  be  a  constitutional  inability  to 
think  logically,  a  fundamental  lack  of  one 
vital  element  of  the  Inborn  talent. 

But  let  us  assume  that  you  have  learned 
to  think  clearly.  The  next  step  is  to  learn 
to  write  as  clearly  as  you  think.  If  your 
stumbling-block  lies  at  this  point,  there  is 
hope  for  you.  If  you  know  what  you  want 
to  say  and  yet  manage  to  tangle  up  your 
thoughts  in  a  snarl  of  words,  that  is  sheer 
bad  writing  and  there  Is  no  excuse  for  It. 
No  one  who  can  think  straight  has  any 

[189] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  CLEARNESS 

business  to  write  badly.  There  is  no  ne- 
cessity for  it,  because  it  is  the  easiest  of  all 
errors  for  which  to  obtain  outside  help. 
It  is  a  simple  question  of  fact  whether  a 
given  paragraph  does  or  does  not  convey 
the  meaning  you  want  it  to  when  read  by 
the  casual  reader  of  average  intelligence. 
It  is  not  a  matter  of  expert  judgment;  it  in- 
volves no  canon  of  art  any  more  than  the 
question  whether  a  landscape  painter's  pic- 
ture of  a  Holstein  cow  looks  like  a  cow  or  a 
black  and  white  sign-post.  If  a  country- 
bred  child,  looking  at  that  cow,  calls  it  a 
sign-post,  all  the  art  critics  in  the  world 
cannot  free  that  painter  from  the  reproach 
of  obscurity.  So,  if  you  are  in  doubt 
whether  or  not  you  write  clearly  you  need 
not  apply  to  a  professional  critic.  You 
can  always  find  someone  near  at  hand  to 
help  you,  some  patient,  long-suffering  mem- 
ber of  your  immediate  family  circle,  and 
[190] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  CLEARNESS 

preferably  someone  who  Is  not  literary, — 
someone  who  more  nearly  represents  the 
so-called  "  general  public."  Read  your 
paragraphs  to  him  and  then  ask  him, 
"  What  does  this  mean  to  you?  What 
have  I  tried  to  say?  "  If  your  amateur 
critic  is  dubious,  If  he  arrives  at  a  wrong 
Idea,  or  catches  the  right  one  only  after  an 
obvious  effort,  then  what  you  have  written 
Is  badly  done  and  must  be  written  over. 
Now  of  course  he  cannot  tell  you  just  why 
it  Is  badly  done,  or  what  particular  words 
and  phrases  are  misleading,  or  what  would 
be  the  simplest  twist  by  which  to  remedy 
them.  He  simply  throws  the  burden  back 
on  you  where  It  belongs;  you  will  have  to 
grope  for  the  remedy;  and  a  little  groping, 
a  little  more  hard  work  will  not  hurt  you. 
What  your  friend  has  done  Is  simply  to 
serve  a  purpose  analogous  to  that  of  re- 
translation  In  the  case  of  documents  such 

[191] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  CLEARNESS 

as  patent-right  papers  or  international 
treaties,  where  the  first  translator  turns  the 
original  from  English  into  French,  and  a 
second  translator  reconverts  it  into  Eng- 
lish,—  and  if  the  last  version  differs  from 
the  original,  the  translation  must  be  all 
done  over. 

But  besides  the  practical  method  of  ex- 
perimenting with  your  writings  on  your 
friends,  there  are  a  few  simple  principles 
to  keep  in  mind  that  will  often  save  you 
from  stumbling.  Do  not  let  rules  of  rhe- 
toric and  style  stand  in  the  way  of  clear- 
ness; cheerfully  break  any  one  of  them 
rather  than  be  obscure.  It  may  be  villain- 
ously bad  style  to  allow  the  same  word  to 
recur  half  a  dozen  times  upon  a  page ;  but 
it  would  be  better  to  repeat  that  word  half 
a  dozen  times  within  a  single  line  rather 
than  to  lack  clearness.  Professor  Barrett 
Wendell  offers  a  case  in  point  when  he 
writes : 

[192] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  CLEARNESS 

Clearness  I  may  best  define  as  the  distinguish- 
ing quality  of  a  style  that  cannot  be  misunder- 
stood. To  be  thoroughly  clear,  it  is  not  enough 
that  style  express  the  writer's  meaning;  style 
must  so  express  this  meaning  that  no  rational 
reader  can  have  any  doubt  as  to  what  the  mean- 
ing is.  To  come  as  near  clearness  as  I  could,  for 
example,  I  deliberately  avoided  pronouns  in  that 
last  sentence,  repeating  style  and  meaning  with  a 
clumsiness  defensible  only  on  the  score  of  lucidity. 

And  Macaulay,  discussing  the  use  of  the 
French  word,  ahhe,  in  place  of  the  English, 
abbot,  expresses  the  same  rule  even  more 
forcibly : 

We  do  not  like  to  see  French  words  introduced 
into  English  composition:  but,  after  all,  the  first 
law  of  writing,  that  law  to  which  all  other  laws 
are  subordinate,  is  this,  that  the  words  employed 
shall  be  such  as  convey  to  the  reader  the  meaning 
of  the  writer.  Now  an  abbot  is  the  head  of  a 
religious  house;  an  abbe  is  quite  a  different  sort 
of  person.  It  is  better  undoubtedly  to  use  an 
English  word  than  a  French  word ;  but  it  is  bet- 

[193] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  CLEARNESS 

ter  to  use  a  French  word  than  to  misuse  an  Eng- 
lish word. 


And  In  this  connection  we  must  not  for- 
get the  words  of  the  genial  Autocrat  of  the 
Breakfast  Table:  "  The  divinity  student 
looked  as  if  he  would  like  to  question  my 
Latin.  No  sir,  I  said, —  you  need  not 
trouble  yourself.  There  Is  a  higher  law 
in  grammar  not  to  be  put  down  by  Andrew 
and  Stoddard." 

If  you  would  be  clear  cultivate  simplicity 
and  brevity.  But  remember  that  brevity 
is  not  always  synonymous  with  the  smallest 
possible  number  of  words.  As  Edgar 
Allan  Poe  once  wisely  wrote :  "  The  most 
truly  concise  style  is  that  which  most  rap- 
idly transmits  the  sense.  .  .  .  Those 
are  mad  who  admire  brevity  which  squan- 
ders our  time  for  the  purpose  of  economiz- 
ing our  printing-ink  and  paper.*'  Never 
hesitate  to  use  as  many  words  as  are  re- 
[194] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  CLEARNESS 

quired  to  convey  your  meaning,  your  whole 
meaning  and  nothing  but  your  meaning,  be- 
yond the  shadow  of  a  doubt.  A  rather 
good  way  to  acquire  a  simple  style  is  to  try 
to  write  more  in  the  manner  of  ordinary 
conversation.  And  the  reason  for  this 
may  be  readily  understood  by  analogy  with 
a  simple  rule  for  fencing,  laid  down  in  one 
of  Marion  Crawford's  Italian  novels,  by 
his  memorable  duelist,  the  melancholy 
Spicca.  We  are  accustomed,  Spicca  ex- 
iplained,  from  early  childhood,  to  point  at 
things  with  our  index  finger;  indeed, 
through  immemorial  generations  it  has  be- 
come a  sort  of  inborn  instinct.  We  have 
no  need  to  close  one  eye  and  carefully 
sight  along  the  finger:  we  point  with  an 
accuracy  that  is  almost  incredible.  But 
it  does  not  come  naturally  to  us  to 
point  with  a  stick  or  a  sword;  and 
that  is  why  Spicca  acquired  his  wonderful 
dexterity  by  simply  laying  his  index  finger 

[195] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  CLEARNESS 

along  the  blade  of  his  weapon  and  pointing 
with  that.  In  like  manner,  we  have  all 
been  accustomed  from  childhood  to  point, 
as  it  were,  with  spoken  words;  and  this 
we  do  with  a  fair  degree  of  accuracy,  for 
otherwise  we  should  frequently  fail  to  ob- 
tain what  we  want.  But  we  have  not  been 
accustomed  from  childhood  to  point  with 
written  words;  so  it  is  at  least  an  experi- 
ment worth  trying  to  lay  the  index  finger 
of  ordinary  conversation  along  the  written 
line  and  see  if  this  does  not  improve  the 
accuracy  of  our  aim. 

Some  reader  is  almost  certain  to  raise 
the  objection  that  the  result  of  such  an  ex- 
periment will  be  an  excess  of  colloquialism. 
But  there  Is  no  foundation  for  any  such 
fear.  It  would  be  impossible  by  any  means 
short  of  a  phonograph  to  emulate  the  care- 
lessness, the  redundancy,  the  elisions  and 
slurrings  of  even  rather  careful  conversa- 
tion.    In  fiction  where  a  trained  and  ob- 

[196] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  CLEARNESS 

servant  author  deliberately  tries  his  best  to 
make  the  conversation  of  his  characters 
quite  like  that  of  real  life,  he  almost  invar- 
iably errs  on  the  side  of  artificiality,  al- 
ways makes  them  speak  a  little  more  care- 
fully than  they  really  do.  And  what  holds 
true  of  conversation  of  course  applies  with 
double  strength  to  narrative  description  or 
critical  analysis.  But  the  effect  of  the  col- 
loquial tone  while  never  quite  reaching  the 
level  of  actual  conversation  does  tend  to 
make  the  general  tone  of  serious  reading 
lighter  and  more  inviting.  "  The  writ- 
ing," says  Miss  Edgeworth,  "  which  has 
least  the  appearance  of  literary  manufac- 
ture almost  always  pleases  me  the  best;" 
while  St.  Beuve  is  still  more  outspoken: 
*'  To  accustom  oneself,"  he  says,  "  to  write 
as  one  speaks  and  as  one  thinks,  is  that  not 
already  a  long  step  towards  accustoming 
oneself  to  think  wisely?  " 

One  method  which  I  personally  have 

[197] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  CLEARNESS 

found  to  work  well,  both  in  my  own  case 
and  in  that  of  other  writers  of  my  acquaint- 
ance, is  to  thresh  out  a  difficult  episode  or 
problem  in  conversation,  talking  the  whole 
thing  over,  sometimes  with  several  people 
in  succession,  and  thus  gradually  clarifying 
the  underlying  thought  and  crystallising  the 
form  of  its  expression.  It  often  happens 
that  some  phrase  or  expression  which  has 
baffled  and  eluded  us  for  days  in  the  pri- 
vacy of  our  study  suddenly  flashes  into  defi- 
nite shape  in  the  heat  of  a  discussion;  or 
the  one  tantalising  word  that  a  phrase 
lacked  to  clinch  the  meaning  beyond  ques- 
tion leaps  to  the  tip  of  the  speaker's  tongue 
when  it  had  persistently  refused  to  come  at 
the  call  of  the  pen.  And  after  all  is  not 
this  a  perfectly  natural  and  easily  under- 
stood consequence  of  the  way  in  which  the 
whole  art  of  literary  composition  must  have 
developed?  Authorship  antedates  by  un- 
measured centuries  the  discovery  of  letters 

[198] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  CLEARNESS 

and  the  art  of  writing.  The  Inherited 
habit  of  composition  in  the  form  of  oral 
verse  and  prose  is  vastly  older  than  our 
modern  practice  of  secluding  ourselves  and 
scratching  down  rows  of  little  black  sym- 
bols on  a  white  expanse  of  paper,  or  still 
more  incongruously  tapping  celluloid  keys 
with  the  tips  of  our  fingers.  The  whole 
advantage  of  the  conversational  method, 
however,  has  nowhere  been  more  delight- 
fully expressed  than  by  Oliver  Wendell 
Holmes,  through  the  lips  of  the  Auto- 
crat : 

I  rough  out  my  thoughts  in  talk,  as  an  artist 
models  in  clay.  Spoken  language  is  so  plastic,  — 
you  can  pat  or  coax,  and  spread  and  shave,  and 
rub  out  and  fill  up,  and  stick  on  so  easily,  when 
you  work  that  soft  material,  that  there  is  noth- 
ing like  It  for  modeling.  Out  of  It  come  the 
shapes  which  you  turn  into  marble  or  bronze  in 
your  immortal  books,  if  you  happen  to  write 
such. 

[199] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  CLEARNESS 

But  it  does  no  good  to  think  and  to 
write  clearly,  unless  you  write  in  a  language 
intelligible  to  the  class  of  readers  whom 
you  are  trying  to  reach.  The  most  crys- 
talline prose  of  the  clearest  French  thinkers 
remains  meaningless  to  the  reader  possessed 
of  only  a  smattering  of  Ollendorf.  As 
our  familiarity  with  a  foreign  tongue  pro- 
gresses, the  very  last  stage  of  proficiency  is 
that  complete  and  instantaneous  compre- 
hension, as  the  eye  glances  down  the  printed 
page,  with  no  sense  of  effort,  no  conscious- 
ness of  an  intervening  veil.  In  a  minor 
degree,  we  all  know  how  irksome  even  a 
very  clever  dialect  story  may  become;  the 
page  is  studded  over  with  words  and 
phrases  that  convey,  first  of  all,  a  sense  of 
strangeness.  An  account  of  a  horse-race 
or  a  prize-fight,  in  the  sporting  columns  of 
our  daily  papers  may  be  admirably  lucid  to 
the  readers  for  whom  it  is  intended ;  but  to 
many  of  us  it  speaks  in  an  unknown  tongue. 
[200] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  CLEARNESS 

Professor  Barrett  Wendell,  in  his  chapter 
on  Clearness,  already  referred  to,  gives  a 
rather  amusing  example  drawn  from  foot- 
ball parlance.  Centre-rush  and  half-back, 
and  a  score  of  similar  words,  he  admits, 
are  regularly  constructed  compounds 
formed  from  perfectly  familiar  English 
words  and  yet  to  him  devoid  of  any  definite 
meaning.  But,  he  goes  on  to  say,  he  has 
been  informed  and  he  believes  that  there 
are  students  in  his  own  lecture  courses  to 
whom  these  same  words  have  a  real  signifi- 
cance. Similarly,  a  treatise  on  some  spe- 
cial branch  of  physics  or  botany  or  civil 
engineering  may  be  couched  in  the  clearest 
possible  terms  and  yet  convey  no  meaning 
at  all  to  the  reader  unversed  In  those 
sciences.  For  instance,  I  open  quite  at 
random  the  fourth  volume  of  a  recent  Ref- 
erence Handbook  of  the  Medical  Science 
and  I  learn : 

Double  hemiplegia  is  synonymous  with  cere- 
[201] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  CLEARNESS 

bral  paraplegia,  both  indicating  a  paraplegia  of 
intracranial  origin,  involving  the  cerebral  motor- 
tracts. 

A  peripheral  paraplegia  may  be  produced  by  a 
multiple  neuritis  involving  the  peripheral  nerves 
of  both  lower  extremities  in  such  a  symmetrical 
manner  as  closely  to  resemble  spinal-cord  lesions. 

I  am  quite  prepared  to  believe  that  there 
is  nothing  intricate  in  the  thought  that  lies 
concealed  behind  this  barrier  of  technical 
vocabulary;  I  simply  realise  that  I  am  not 
one  of  the  readers  for  whom  it  was  in- 
tended. But  for  me  It  might  just  as  well 
be  the  "  washing  list  In  Babylonian  cunei- 
form "  of  which  we  are  told  by  Gilbert  and 
Sullivan's  Modern  Major  General. 

If  you  are  writing  upon  a  technical  sub- 
ject for  a  special  public,  you  must  use  a 
special  vocabulary.  If  you  are  the  sport- 
ing editor  on  a  dally  paper,  you  must  write 
of  football  In  football  jargon;  but  on  the 
other  hand,  if  you  are  discussing  the  edu- 
[202] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  CLEARNESS 

cational  value  of  football  In  a  pedagogical 
magazine,  you  will  use  a  different  and  sim- 
pler terminology.  And  In  each  case  what 
you  write  may  be  quite  clear  to  the  audience 
for  whom  you  intend  it.  The  only  thing 
to  guard  against  is  the  chance  of  making  a 
mistake  In  your  audience,  the  danger  of  at- 
tributing to  them  a  special  knowledge 
which  they  do  not  possess.  For  that  rea- 
son, it  is  a  good  plan  to  underrate  rather 
than  overrate  the  average  intelligence  of 
your  readers.  Any  physician  can  under- 
stand what  has  happened  if  you  say  that  a 
man  has  broken  the  bones  of  his  forearm, 
but  readers  who  are  not  physicians  may 
have  to  stop  and  think  if  you  write  that  he 
has  suffered  a  fracture  of  both  radius  and 
ulna. 

And  in  the  fourth  place,  your  vocabulary 

may  be  of  the  simplest  and  yet  your  work 

may  convey  to  a  large  majority  of  readers 

a   sense    of   Inpenetrable   density.     There 

[203] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  CLEARNESS 

are,  for  instance,  some  branches  of 
higher  mathematics  in  which  a  person 
with  a  fair  average  knowledge  of  algebra 
and  geometry  will  encounter  no  terms  or 
symbols  that  are  strange  to  his  eye ;  and  yet 
the  meaning  of  what  he  reads  will  leave  his 
mind  absolutely  blank.  The  difficulty  in 
this  case  lies  outside  of  any  question  of 
craftsmanship;  it  is  inherent  in  the  subject 
matter  itself.  When  you  come  across  a 
book  or  article  of  this  type  you  have  to 
recognize  that  it  Is  not  intended  for  you,  or 
at  least  that  you  are  not  yet  ripe  for  It. 
The  novels  of  Mr.  Henry  James  are  one 
of  the  best  possible  instances  of*  this  type 
of  book.  Mr.  James  has  mannerisms, 
many  of  them;  he  has  a  curious,  and  to 
some  readers  an  exasperatingly  confusing 
way  of  introducing  all  his  modifiers,  his 
provisos  and  saving  clauses  parenthetically 
before  reaching  the  conclusion  of  his  main 
sentence.  But  all  of  these  things  put  to- 
[204] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  CLEARNESS 

gether  would  not  account  for  the  difficulty 
that  many  people  find  in  reading  Henry 
James.  The  real  secret  of  his  obscurity 
lies  much  deeper.  It  is  because  he  is  at- 
tempting to  pursue  his  analysis  of  the  hu- 
man heart  and  soul  to  an  unattainable 
point;  to  differentiate  motives  with  a  hair- 
splitting minuteness.  His  books  are  a 
form  of  experimental  psychology  too  intri- 
cate and  erudite  ever  to  be  expressed  with 
perfect  clearness.  And  when  we  encounter 
this  sort  of  obscurity  we  must  recognise 
that  it  is  something  which  is  inherent  in  the 
subject  matter  itself;  in  other  words,  that 
the  book  is  one  of  limited  appeal  to  a  spe- 
cially chosen  audience. 


[205] 


VII 
THE  QUESTION  OF  STYLE 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  QUESTION  OF  STYLE 

There  is,  I  think,  a  good  deal  of  unneces- 
sary heartburn  experienced  by  young  writ- 
ers regarding  the  question  whether  or  not 
they  are  beginning  to  form  a  style.  It  in- 
dicates a  hypochondriacal  condition  of 
mind  akin  to  the  familiar  tendency  of  so 
many  young  medical  students  to  believe 
that  they  are  suffering  from  various  purely 
imaginary  diseases.  A  sound  mind  in  a 
sound  body  is  too  busy  in  performing  the 
numerous  activities  belonging  to  each  day's 
work  to  stop  to  count  the  heart-beats  or  the 
rate  of  respiration.  Any  young  writer, 
possessed  of  something  really  worth  say- 
ing, and  a  certain  driving  energy  that 
[209] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  STYLE 

makes  him  bent  upon  saying  it  in  the  clear- 
est and  most  forceful  way  that  he  possibly 
can,  ought  to  be  too  intent  upon  the  task 
at  hand  to  be  worrying  about  whether  he  is 
forming  a  style, —  whether,  in  other  words, 
his  brave  beginnings  of  to-day  are  corner- 
stones in  the  arch  of  future  fame. 

Style  is  the  aroma  of  literature,  compar- 
able to  the  bouquet  of  old  wine.  You  can- 
not age  a  new  vintage  over  night  by  any 
artificial  process.  No  writer,  by  taking 
thought,  can  add  a  cubit  to  his  height  as 
a  stylist.  It  is  a  matter  of  growth,  and 
slow  ripening.  We  have  seen  that  what 
every  young  writer  should  first  strive  to 
acquire  is  a  clear-cut  idea  of  what  he  Is 
trying  to  accomplish;  that,  secondly,  he 
should  aim  at  a  technical  skill  which  will 
enable  him  to  build  the  framework  of  his 
creations,  whatever  their  form  may  be, 
solidly  and  according  to  the  proportions 
demanded  by  good  art;  and  thirdly,  that 
[210] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  STYLE 

he  must  cultivate  that  infinite  patience 
which  will  strive  to  make  all  parts  and  all 
aspects  of  his  work  tend  toward  a  unity  of 
effect  in  subject  and  structure  and  lan- 
guage. And  when  a  writer  has  learned 
thoroughly  to  do  these  things,  he  need  no 
longer  worry  about  style,  for  style  is  noth- 
ing else  than  the  ability  to  express  one's 
thoughts  in  the  best  possible  way. 
"  Style,"  says  James  Russell  Lowell,  "  is 
the  establishment  of  a  perfect  mutual  un- 
derstanding between  the  worker  and  his 
material."  And  Walter  Pater  expresses 
very  nearly  the  same  thought  in  somewhat 
different  terms  when  he  writes: 

To  give  the  phrase,  the  sentence,  the  struc- 
tural member,  the  entire  composition,  song  or 
essay,  a  similar  unity  with  its  subject  and  with 
itself:  —  style  is  in  the  right  way  when  it  tends 
toward  that. 

The  ability  to  express  one's  thoughts 

[211] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  STYLE 

in  the  best  possible  way, —  that  is  a  rather 
bigger  contract  than  at  first  appears.  Not 
merely  to  express  one's  thoughts  in  the 
clearest  possible  way,  or  the  most  forcible, 
or  the  most  florid,  or  the  most  faultlessly 
grammatical  way.  It  means  a  great  deal 
more  than  any  one  of  these,  or  all  of  them 
taken  together.  It  means  the  nicest  pos- 
sible compromise  between  clearness,  let  us 
say,  on  the  one  hand,  and  metaphor  on  the 
other ;  or  between  the  realism  of  colloquial^ 
speech,  and  the  dignity  of  narrative  verse ; 
or  between  the  special  effects  of  contrast 
and  a  general  effect  of  uniformity.  In  its 
widest  definition,  there  is  nothing  that  can 
be  said  or  written  in  any  language  under 
the  sun  that  has  not  its  special  ideal  of 
style, —  some  one  form  most  appropriate 
to  it :  and  to  some  degree  the  ability  to  at- 
tain approximately  this  desired  norm  is  an 
element  of  the  Inborn  Talent;  —  just  as 
marksmanship  of  any  kind  is  partly  a  mat- 
[212] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  STYLE 

ter  of  practice  and  partly  also  a  matter 
of  natural  aptitude. 

If  you  examine  in  succession  a  series  of 
definitions  of  style,  taken  at  random  from 
various  authorities,  you  will  find  the  di- 
vergence between  them  rather  confusing. 
The  more  you  read,  the  more  confused 
you  are  likely  to  become.  The  trouble,  of 
course,  is  a  lack  of  agreement  on  the  part 
of  the  authorities  regarding  the  nature  and 
extent  of  the  quality  which  they  are  trying 
to  define.  One  writer,  for  instance,  as- 
sumes that  style  is  a  combination  of  clear- 
ness, force  and  elegance;  another  looks 
upon  style  as  a  blending  of  a  certain  ab- 
stract perfection  of  writing  with  the  per- 
sonal element,  which  at  best  Is  manner  and 
at  worst  is  mannerism,  while  still  a  third 
considers  style  as  something  apart  from  the 
personal  equation, —  a  sort  of  ideal  goal 
towards  which  we  press,  but  which  we 
never   attain.     The   same   discrepancy  is 

[213] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  STYLE 

noticeable  in  the  use  of  the  word,  style,  in 
other  connections, —  take  it,  for  instance, 
in  the  matter  of  dress.  Now  clearness  of 
purpose  in  dress  involves  the  intent  of 
clothing  the  body  and  keeping  it  warm ;  and 
in  this  elemental  sense  one  hears  people 
speak  of  the  style  of  clothes  worn  by  peas- 
ants, or  artisans,  or  savage  tribes.  A  cer- 
tain proportion  of  people,  on  the  other 
hand,  think  of  style  in  dress  as  a  sort  of 
self-advertisement,  a  matter  of  force  and 
emphasis,  a  question  of  flamboyance  and 
the  dernier  cri.  And  there  are  still  others 
who,  with  a  finer  conservatism,  understand 
style  to  be  that  rare  art  in  dress  which  ef- 
fects a  perfect  compromise  between  the 
prevailing  fashion  and  the  personality, 
and  which  unerringly  chooses,  in  color  and 
in  form,  the  garment  best  designed  to  suit, 
most  completely  and  at  the  same  time  most 
unobtrusively  the  individual  need. 

Now  there  is  no  logic  in  looking  upon 

[214] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  STYLE 

any  one  of  these  definitions  of  style  as  be- 
ing right  and  the  rest  of  them  all  wrong. 
The  one  thing  needful  to  know  Is  which 
view  any  particular  critic  holds,  for  then 
any  apparent  contradiction  disappears.  I 
am  inclined  to  think,  however,  for  the  pur- 
pose of  good  craftsmanship,  that  the  most 
helpful  view  to  hold  is  the  third  of  those 
given  above :  namely,  that^tyle  is  an  ideal 
goalj  towards  which  we  struggle,  but  for- 
ever unattainable.  Try  to  think  of  style 
in  literature  somewhat  as  you  think  of  the 
copper-plate  line  of  Spencerian  penman- 
ship at  the  top  of  the  page  in  a  copy-book, 
—  as  the  model  towards  which  the  pupil 
Is  faithfully  striving,  but  which  it  would  be 
undesirable  for  him  to  attain  with  complete 
fidelity.  Without  some  such  model  to  fol- 
low, no  one  ever  acquires  a  good  hand- 
writing; but,  on  the  other  hand,  no  one 
with  any  sort  of  individuality  wants  to 
write  like  a  copy-book.     Think  how  char- 

[215] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  STYLE 

acter  in  handwriting  strengthens  and 
deepens  with  the  passing  years, — and  it 
will  do  this  quite  regardless  of  whether  we 
started  with  a  good  or  bad  model  at  the 
top  of  our  page.  But  what  a  gulf  there  is 
between  the  handwriting  that  is  clear,  and 
artistic  and  individual,  and  that  which  has 
individuality  and  nothing  else!  And  to 
a  far  greater  extent  do  we  feel  the  differ- 
ence between  the  writer  who  has  style  and 
individuality,  and  him  who  has  individu- 
ality without  style. 

My  advice,  then,  to  the  beginner  in  writ- 
ing is :  do  not  worry  too  much  about  your 
style :  do  not  be  all  the  time  counting  your 
literary  pulse.  Try  to  write  as  simply  and 
as  clearly  as  you  can  and  without  self-con- 
sciousness. In  learning  the  rudiments  of 
your  art  you  are  like  the  novice  in  archery 
learning  to  hit  a  target.  Concentrate  your- 
self upon  the  task  of  making  your  verbal 
shafts  reach  their  mark.     If  you  do  this 

[216] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  STYLE 

faithfully,  ease  and  grace  should  follow 
in  their  own  due  time. 

Do  not  assume,  however,  that  if  you  are 
faithful,  you  will  acquire  one  of  the  few 
masterly  styles  in  literature.  It  is  given 
to  the  very  few  to  attain  this.  Be  satis- 
fied if  you  succeed  in  keeping  near  enough 
to  your  copper-plate  model  so  that  your 
mannerisms  will  be  overlooked,  or  if  you 
succeed  in  say  anything  of  such  impor- 
tance that  your  readers  tl)ink  more  of  what 
you  say  than  how  you  say  it.  Wine,  as 
said  above,  acquires  bouquet  only  in  the 
course  of  years;  but  no  number  of  years 
can  ever  give  bouquet  to  a  poor  vintage. 
Nevertheless  a  good  many  attempts  have 
been  made,  and  with  some  degree  of  ap- 
parent success,  to  age,  a  literary  style. 
Certain  writers  have  deliberately  set  them- 
selves, as  part  of  their  apprenticeship,  the 
task  of  practicing  the  mannerisms  of  a 
few  recognized  masters  of  English  prose. 
[217] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  STYLE 

Stevenson  is  a  conspicuous  example  of  this 
practice,  and  the  quality  of  his  prose  is 
admittedly  a  result  of  such  self-training. 
In  his  essay,  "  A  College  Magazine,"  he 
has  himself  outlined  his  method  as  fol- 
lows: 

Whenever  I  read  a  book  or  a  passage  that  par- 
ticularly pleased  me,  in  which  a  thing  was  said 
or  an  effect  rendered  with  propriety,  in  which 
there  was  either  some  conspicuous  force  or  some 
happy  distinction  in  the  style,  I  must  sit  down 
at  once  and  set  myself  to  ape  that  quality.  .  .  . 
I  thus  played  the  sedulous  ape  to  Hazlitt,  to 
Lamb,  to  Wordsworth,  to  Sir  Thomas  Browne, 
to  Defoe,  to  Hawthorne,  to  Montaigne,  to  Bau- 
delaire, and  to  Obermann.  .  .  .  That,  like 
it  or  not,  is  the  way  to  learn  to  write. 

Yet,  where  this  method  succeeds  with 
one  man  out  of  ten,  it  is  quite  likely  to  do 
more  harm  than  good  to  the  nine  others, 
making  them  mere  copyists, —  like  a  young 
painter  who  spends  his  days  reproducing 

[218] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  STYLE 

a  Raphael  or  a  Rubens,  instead  of  remain- 
ing under  the  open  sky,  learning  to  express 
his  own  thoughts  In  his  own  way.  Some 
teachers,  Indeed,  question  whether  any 
real  benefit  accrues  from  conscious  imita- 
tion of  another  man's  style.  Professor  A. 
S.  Hill  has  put  himself  on  record  In  the  fol- 
lowing emphatic  manner: 

In  a  great  writer  the  style  is  the  man, —  the 
man  as  made  by  his  ancestors,  his  education,  his 
career,  his  circumstances,  and  his  genius. 

It  IS  idle,  then,  to  attempt  to  secure  a  good 
style  by  imitating  this  or  that  writer ;  for  the  best 
part  of  a  good  style  is  incommunicable.  An  imi- 
tator may,  if  he  applies  himself  closely  to  the  task, 
catch  mannerisms  and  reproduce  defects,  and  per- 
haps superficial  merits;  but  most  valuable  quali- 
ties, those  that  have  their  root  in  character,  he 
will  miss  altogether,  except  in  so  far  as  his  own 
personality  resembles  that  of  his  model. 

Of  course,  between  these  two  extremes; 
the  belief,  on  the  one  hand,  that  conscious 
[219] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  STYLE 

imitation  is  the  only  way  to  learn  to  write ; 
and  on  the  other,  that  it  is  no  way  at  all 
to  learn,  the  truth,  as  usual  lies  some- 
where midway.  Yet  it  is  worth  noting 
that  even  Stevenson  has  not  escaped  re- 
proach. Mr.  H.  D.  Traill,  for  instance, 
complains  that  his  style  * 'suffers  somewhat 
from  its  evidences  of  too  conscious  art"; 
Henry  James  says,  in  friendly  criticism 
that  his  style  "has  nothing  accidental  or 
diffident;  it  is  eminently  conscious  of  its 
responsibilities  and  meets  them  with  a  kind 
of  gallantry, — as  if  language  were  a 
pretty  woman,  and  a  person  who  proposed 
to  handle  it  had,  of  necessity,  to  be  some- 
thing of  a  Don  Juan."  And  Professor 
Saintsbury  is  even  more  emphatic: 

Adopting  to  the  full,  and  something  more  than 
the  full,  the  modern  doctrine  of  the  all-impor- 
tance of  art,  of  manner,  of  style  in  literature, 
Mr.  Stevenson  early  made  the  most  elaborate 
studies  in  imitative  composition.  There  is  no 
[220] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  STYLE 

doubt  that  he  at  last  succeeded  in  acquiring  a 
style  which  was  quite  his  own;  but  it  was  com- 
plained, and  with  justice,  that  even  to  the  last 
he  never  obtained  complete  ease  in  this  style; 
its  mannerism  was  not  only  excessive,  but  bore, 
as  even  excessive  mannerism  by  no  means  always 
does,  the  marks  of  distinct  and  obvious  efFort. 

Now  It  Is  quite  likely  that  In  reading 
Stevenson  you  are  not  conscious  of  this 
''distinct  and  obvious  effort"  of  which 
Professor  Salntsbury  speaks ;  personally,  I 
always  am, — although  that  does  not  pre- 
vent me  from  appreciating  his  worth  In 
literature.  But  the  fact  strengthens  me  In 
the  conviction  that  I  am  right  In  saying 
that  to  ask  oneself  continually,  "Am  I  ac- 
quiring a  style?"  Is  apt  to  bring  one  little 
profit.  It  Is  like  a  novice  In  painting  simi- 
larly asking,  "Am  I  learning  to  mix  col- 
ours?" A  painter  does  not  need  to  dis- 
tress himself  about  the  beauty  and  har- 
mony of  all  the  colours  that  he  may  sooner 
[221] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  STYLE 

or  later  be  called  upon  to  mix, —  the  im- 
portant thing  is  to  do  the  best  he  can  to 
obtain  the  particular  colour  that  he  needs 
for  the  moment.  "  Colour  is  a  gift,"  says 
Dick  Heldar  to  Maisie,  in  The  Light  that 
Failed,  "  Put  it  aside  and  think  no  more 
about  it."  Similarly,  although  the  paral- 
lel is  not  wholly  true,  a  beginner  will  cer- 
tainly do  himself  no  great  harm  by  assum- 
ing that  in  the  craft  of  writing,  style  is  a 
gift  that  may  for  the  time  be  put  aside  and 
forgotten.  Be  sure  that  for  the  beginner 
the  least  style  is  the  best  style.  Do  not 
polish  excessively;  and  when  you  do  polish, 
be  sure  that  you  have  something  that  is 
worthy  of  polishing.  It  is  well  to  put  a 
lustre  on  solid  mahogany;  but  it  is  foolish 
to  expend  energy  and  good  wax  upon  soft 
pine. 

Of  course,  if  you  want  to  go  somewhat 
deeply  into  the  whole  question,  you  might 
[222] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  STYLE 

begin  by  reading  what  various  recognised 
stylists  have  said  upon  the  subject;  you 
might  make  yourself  familiar  with  De 
Quincey's  Essay  on  Style  and  Pater's;  and 
what  Lowell  has  to  say,  and  Stevenson  too 
and  half  a  dozen  more  besides  to  whom 
they  will  readily  guide  you.  And  the 
chances  are  that  after  a  few  hours,  or  days, 
of  diligent  reading  you  will  come  away  with 
a  considerable  sense  of  discouragement 
and  confusion ;  because,  while  they  all 
fairly  agree  that  style  is  a  question  of  fit- 
ting the  method  to  the  material;  and  that 
there  is  not  one  style  but  there  are  many 
styles,  just  as  there  may  be  many  forms  of 
dress  to  suit  different  occupations;  yet  af- 
ter all  they  do  not  lay  down  rules  that  are 
really  helpful.  Some  comfort  is  to  be 
gained  out  of  Pater,  if  read  understand- 
ingly,  for  he  has  a  broad  sanity  of  outlook 
that  recognises  merit  in  a  great  diversity 
[223] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  STYLE 

of  methods.  Here,  for  instance,  is  a  para- 
graph which  embodies  the  essence  of  all 
he  has  to  say  on  this  subject  and  is  well 
worth  pondering  upon: 

In  the  highest,  as  in  the  lowest  literature,  the 
one  indispensable  beauty  is,  after  all,  truth: — 
truth  to  bare  facts  in  the  latter,  as  to  some  per- 
sonal sense  of  fact;  diverted  somewhat  from 
men's  ordinary  sense  of  it,  in  the  former:  truth 
there  as  accuracy,  truth  here  as  expression,  that 
finest  and  most  intimate  form  of  truth,  the 
vraie  verite.  And  what  an  eclectic  principle  this 
really  is!  Employing  for  its  one  sole  purpose — 
that  absolute  accordance  of  expression  to  idea — 
all  other  literary  beauties  and  excellencies  what- 
ever :  how  many  kinds  of  style  it  covers,  explains, 
justifies  and,  at  the  same  time,  safeguards! 
Scott's  facility,  Flaubert's  deeply  pondered  evoca- 
tion of  "  the  phrase  '*  are  equally  good  art.  Say 
what  you  have  to  say,  what  you  have  a  will  to 
say,  in  the  simplest,  the  most  direct  and  exact 
manner  possible,  with  no  surplusage :  there  is  the 
[224] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  STYLE 

justification  of  the  sentence  so  fortunately  born, 
"entire,  smooth  and  round,"  that  it  needs  no 
punctuation,  and  also  (that  is  the  point!)  of  the 
most  elaborate  period,  if  it  be  right  in  its  elabora- 
tion. Here  is  the  office  of  ornament;  here  also 
the  purpose  of  restraint  in  ornament.  .  .  . 
The  seeming  baldness  of  Le  Rouge  et  le  Noir  is 
nothing  in  itself;  the  wild  ornament  of  Les 
Miserables  is  nothing  in  itself;  and  the  restraint 
of  Flaubert,  amid  a  real  natural  opulence,  only 
redoubled  beauty, — the  phrase  so  large  and  so 
precise  at  the  same  time,  hard  as  bronze,  in  serv- 
ice to  the  more  perfect  adaptation  of  words  to 
their  matter. 

Literature,  by  finding  its  specific  excellence  in 
the  absolute  correspondence  of  the  term  to-  its 
import,  will  be  but  fulfilling  the  condition  of  all 
artistic  quality  in  things  everywhere,  of  all  good 
art. 

it  IS  Pater  who  says  of  the  author  of 
Madame  B ovary,  "If  all  high  things  have 
their  martyrs,  Gustave  Flaubert  might  per- 

[225] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  STYLE 

haps  rank  as  the  martyr  of  literary  style  " ; 
and  In  support  of  this  opinion  he  proceeds 
to  quote  the  following  summary  of  Flau- 
bert's literary  creed: 

Possessed  of  an  absolute  belief  that  there  ex- 
ists but  one  way  of  expressing  one  thing,  one 
word  to  call  it  by,  one  adjective  to  qualify,  one 
verb  to  animate  it,  he  gave  himself  to  super- 
human labour  for  the  discovery,  in  every  phrase, 
of  that  word,  that  verb,  that  epithet.  In  this 
way,  he  believed  in  some  mysterious  harmony  of 
expression,  and  when  a  true  word  seemed  to  him 
to  lack  euphony,  still  went  on  seeking  another, 
with  invincible  pains,  certain  that  he  had  not  yet 
got  hold  of  the  word.  ...  A  thousand  pre- 
occupations would  beset  him  at  the  same  moment, 
always  with  this  desperate  certitude  fixed  in  his 
spirit:  Amongst  all  the  expressions  in  the  world, 
all  forms  and  turns  of  expression,  there  is  but 
one — one  form,  one  mode, — to  express  what  I 
want  to  say. 

Now,    theoretically    Flaubert    is    right; 
[226] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  STYLE 

there  are  no  perfectly  equivalent  synonyms 
either  of  words  or  phrases, —  and  even  the 
same  phrase  will  take  on  shades  of  mean- 
ing when  spoken  by  different  lips.  When- 
ever you  utter  a  sentence  you  have  ex- 
pressed a  thought  in  the  only  way  in  which 
that  particular  thought  down  to  the  last 
hair-splitting  shade  of  meaning  can  be  ex- 
pressed. Change  a  syllable  and  you 
change  the  meaning  —  that  was  Flaubert's 
doctrine  and  it  meant  torture  to  him.  And 
the  trouble,  of  course,  was  that  he  tried  to 
practise  what  can  never  be  more  than 
theoretical.  It  would  be  a  great  comfort 
to  believe,  with  Emerson,  that  "  There  Is 
no  choice  of  words  for  him  who  clearly 
sees  the  truth;  that  provides  him  with  the 
best  word  " ;  but  to  most  of  us  such  clear- 
ness of  vision  Is  denied.  If  a  writer  could 
really  know  down  to  the  ultimate  shade  of 
thought  exactly  what  he  wanted  to  say 
and  exactly  the  tone  in  which  he  wanted 
[227] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  STYLE 

to  say  it,  and  if  his  brain  was  so  equipped 
that  it  had  at  command  the  entire  contents 
of  the  unabridged  dictionary  then,  theo- 
retically, the  one  inevitable  word-sequence 
ought  forthwith  to  present  itself  to  him. 
In  practice,  however,  there  are  a  hundred 
different  ways  that  occur  to  us  for  saying 
even  some  quite  simple  thing,  each  of  them 
not  precisely  what  we  want  to  say,  but  rep- 
resenting a  compromise,  a  sacrifice,  on  the 
side  of  meaning,  or  of  euphony,  or  of 
rhythm.  The  one  perfect  way  is  the  dream 
of  a  visionary,  a  forever  unattainable  ideal. 
We  may  come  more  or  less  near  to  it  in 
proportion  to  our  ten  talents  or  our  two 
talents  or  our  one,  but  it  always  eludes  us. 
And  the  finer  the  artist,  the  more  he  is  apt 
to  suffer  because  he  sees  so  clearly  how  far 
short  he  has  fallen.  Style,  then,  practi- 
cally means  the  ability  to  choose  the  words 
that  will  give  us  just  the  right  meaning, 
just  the  right  harmony,  just  the  right  ca- 
[228] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  STYLE 

dence.  And  if  this  is  to  be  done  worthily 
we  must  attain  our  results  so  far  as  possi- 
ble without  straying  afield  for  queer, 
exotic  words  and  phrases.  It  is,  says 
Lowell,  "the  secondary  intellect  which 
asks  for  excitement  in  expression,  and 
stimulates  itself  into  mannerism,  which  is 
the  wilful  obtrusion  of  self,  as  style  is  its 
unconscious  abnegation."  And  Maupas- 
sant, in  his  well-known  preface  to  Pierre 
et  Jean,  wrote  in  similar  strain: 

There  is  no  need  of  the  bizarre,  complicated, 
extensive  and  Chinese  vocabulary  that  they  force 
upon  us  to-day  under  the  name  of  artistic  writ- 
ing to  catch  all  the  shades  of  thought;  but  it  is 
necessary  to  discern  with  extreme  lucidity  all  the 
modifications  in  the  value  of  a  word  according 
to  the  place  it  occupies.  Let  us  have  fewer 
nouns,  verbs  and  adjectives  with  meanings  almost 
incomprehensible,  but  let  us  bave  more  different 
phrases. 

In  regard  to  vocabulary  no  better  rule 
[229] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  STYLE 

has  been  formulated  down  to  the  present 
day  than  that  old  dictum  of  Quintilllan: 
"  Use  only  the  newest  of  the  old  and  the 
oldest  of  the  new."  We  may,  of  course, 
assume  In  theory  that  no  word  is  so  obso- 
lete that  it  may  not  under  some  special 
conditions  be  revived;  no  slang  so  recent 
as  to  be  wholly  barred  out  of  print.  D'An- 
nunzio,  the  recognised  master  of  modern 
Italian  style,  has  ransacked  the  early 
writers  for  so  many  out-of-the-way  words 
that  some  of  his  later  prose  can  be  more 
easily  read  by  a  college  bred  Anglo-Saxon 
with  a  fair  knowledge  of  the  language 
than  by  an  equally  intelligent  Italian  who 
does  not  happen  to  be  well  grounded  in 
Latin  and  Greek.  And  in  the  opposite 
scale,  we  have  Mr.  Kipling,  who  fearlessly 
enriches  our  language  with  such  words  as 
he  thinks  It  needs.  Nevertheless,  the  safe 
norm  lies  in  the  simple,  every-day  vocabu- 
lary. A  good  craftsman  can  accomplish 
[230] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  STYLE 

wonderful  things  with  a  limited  number 
of  tools:  a  certain  eminent  surgeon  has 
been  known  to  perform  successfully  an  ope- 
ration for  appendicitis  with  no  other  instru- 
ment than  a  simple  pair  of  scissors.  One 
trouble  with  many  of  us  is  that  we  over- 
work just  a  few  words  and  combinations  of 
words,  and  neglect  other  equally  good  com- 
binations; we  have  the  vice  of  the  hack- 
neyed phrase.  A'  well-known  American 
critic  once  said  in  conversation  that  he 
would  rather  be  caught  stealing  a  watch 
than  saying  that  a  book  "  filled  a  long- 
felt  want  " — and  unquestionably  the  two 
offences  differ  in  kind  rather  than  de- 
gree. It  was  Daudet  who  expressed  the 
philosophy  of  the  hackneyed  phrase 
perhaps  rather  more  felicitously  than  any 
other : 

What   profound   disgust   must   those   epithets 
feel  which  have  lived  for  centuries  with  the  same 

[231] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  STYLE 

nouns!  Bad  writers  cannot  be  made  to  compre- 
hend this.  They  think  divorce  is  not  permitted 
to  words.  There  are  people  who  write  without 
blushing:  venerable  trees,  melodious  accents. 
Venerable  is  not  an  ugly  word;  put  it  with 
another  substantive  —  "your  venerable  burden," 
"most  venerable  worth,"  etc.,  —  you  see  the 
union  is  good.  In  short,  the  epithet  should  be 
the  mistress  of  the  substantive,  never  its  lawful 
wife.  Between  words  there  must  be  passing 
liaisons,  but  no  eternal  marriages.  It  is  that 
which  distinguishes  the  original  writer  from 
others. 

It  is  that,  an  Anglo-Saxon  critic  finds 
himself  instinctively  adding,  that  distin- 
guishes just  a  few  of  the  more  prominent 
British  writers  of  the  young  school; 
writers  otherwise  very  wide  apart  indeed 
— Rudyard  Kipling  and  Maurice  Hew- 
lett, Joseph  Conrad  and  Alfred  Ollivant 
and  J.  C.  Snaith — to  mention  only  a  few 
striking  examples.  Each  of  these  has  a 
[232] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  STYLE 

style  of  his  own;  some  of  them,  indeed, 
have  a  number  of  styles,  to  be  donned  and 
doffed  upon  occasion ;  but  the  one  trait  that 
they  all  have  in  common  is  a  frank  audac- 
ity of  new  combinations,  a  tendency  to 
take  liberties  with  noun  and  adjective,  and 
pair  them  off  with  as  little  ceremony  as  a 
hostess  pairs  off  her  guests  for  a  cotillion 
— and  with  as  little  malice.  De  Quincey 
wrote,  not  without  a  grain  of  literary  snob- 
bishness : 

Like  boys  who  are  throwing  the  sun's  rays 
in  the  eyes  of  a  mob  by  means  of  a  mirror,  you 
must  shift  your  lights  and  vibrate  your  reflec- 
tions at  every  possible  angle,  if  you  would  agi- 
tate the  popular  mind  extensively. 

De  Quincey,  of  course,  had  a  certain 
ingrained  scorn  of  the  popular  mind.  It 
was  quite  unconsciously,  while  here  intend- 
ing to  stigmatise  a  type  of  bad  rhetoric, 
that  he  actually  gave  us  a  rather  vivid 
[233] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  STYLE 

metaphor  of  the  principle  upon  which  lan- 
guage tends  constantly  to  renew  itself. 

And  this  brings  us  to  a  vital  point  in 
the  whole  question  of  acquiring  style.  If 
you  are  proposing  to  learn  the  craft  of 
building,  or  pottery  making,  or  carpet 
weaving,  will  you  be  satisfied  to  know  noth- 
ing beyond  what  has  been  done  by  England 
or  America?  Or  will  you,  just  as  a  mat- 
ter of  business  shrewdness,  study  what  has 
been  done  in  the  past  in  Greece  and  Rome, 
in  Egypt  and  Turkey  and  India?  The 
business  man  and  the  scientist  always  keep 
a  keen  eye  on  the  whole  world.  And  the 
man  of  letters  cannot  afford  to  do  less. 
If  you  run  over  the  list  of  the  world's 
great  stylists,  you  will  find  that  they  were, 
relatively  speaking,  linguists.  I  use  the 
term,  relatively  speaking,  advisedly;  be- 
cause in  some  countries  and  at  certain 
epochs,  a  man  who  knew  one  language  be- 
sides his  own  passed  as  a  person  of  learn- 
[234] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  STYLE 

ing;  while  in  another,  two  or  three  extra 
tongues  carried  slight  distinction.  One  of 
our  professional  humourists  once  said  that 
he  knew  a  man  who  spoke  seventeen  lan- 
guages, and  never  said  anything  of  Impor- 
tance in  any  of  them.  There  Is  a  point  at 
which  the  brain  becomes  merely  acquisi- 
tive. But  the  possession  of  two  or  three 
languages  besides  onee's  own  is  the  best 
of  all  aids  to  a  distinctive  style.  It  was 
James  Russell  Lowell  who  said :  "  The 
practice  of  translation,  by  making  us  de- 
liberate in  the  choice  of  the  best  equivalent 
of  the  foreign  word  In  our  own  language, 
has  likewise  the  advantage  of  continually 
schooling  us  In  one  of  the  main  elements 
of  a  good  styles — precision;  and  precision 
of  thought  is  not  only  exemplified  by  pre- 
cision of  language,  but  is  largely  dependent 
on  the  habit  of  it." 

There  are,  besides,  certain  advantages 
to  be  gained  from  seeing  the  purely  tech- 

[235] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  STYLE 

nical  difficulties  of  language  managed  with 
masterly  skill  in  a  different  medium  from 
our  own.  We  may  struggle  for  years  to 
acquire  facility  in  avoiding  harsh  combi- 
nations of  final  and  initial  letters,  the  ex- 
asperating recurrence  of  some  cacophonous 
but  necessary  relative  pronoun,  the  jerk 
and  jolt  of  an  awkward  rhythm — and  at 
the  end  of  that  time  we  shall  not  know  as 
much  of  the  philosophy  of  a  fluent  and  me- 
lodious style  as  could  have  been  learned  by 
one  quarter  of  the  effort  through  exam- 
ining what  can  be  done  in  a  naturally  musi- 
cal language  like  Greek;  a  language  in 
which  harsh  final  mutes  have  no  existence 
and  in  which  one  difficulty  of  a  good  prose 
style  was  not  that  of  interweaving  poetic 
rhythms,  but  rather  of  avoiding  them. 
And  similarly  we  can  learn  to  correct  our 
own  tendencies  to  carry  certain  principles 
of  prose  writing  to  excess  by  seeing  these 
same  principles  carried  to  a  reductio  ad 

[236] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  STYLE 

absurdum,  A  good  illustration  of  this 
point  Is  contained  in  Zola's  account  of 
Turgeneff's  amazement  as  he  listened  to  a 
discussion  between  Flaubert  and  his  friends 
regarding  that  very  point  already  referred 
to,  the  pursuit  of  the  one  inevitable  word : 

Turgeneff  opened  enormous  eyes.  He  evi- 
dently did  not  understand;  he  declared  that  no 
writer,  in  any  language,  had  ever  refined  his  style 
to  such  an  extent.  At  home,  in  Russia,  nothing 
of  the  kind  existed.  From  that  day  forth,  every 
time  that  he  heard  us  cursing  the  whas  and  the 
which' s,  I  often  saw  him  smile;  and  he  said  that 
we  were  quite  wrong  not  to  make  a  franker  use 
of  our  language,  which  is  one  of  the  clearest  and 
simplest  there  are.  I  am  of  his  opinion,  I  have 
always  been  struck  with  the  justice  of  his  judg- 
ment; it  is  perhaps  because,  being  a  stranger,  he 
sees  us  from  the  necessary  distance  and  detach- 
ment. 

But    whether   you    accept   Turgeneff's 
view  and  choose  to  cultivate  the  franker 
[237] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  STYLE 

use  of  language ;  or  on  the  other  hand  are 
pleased  to  pursue  endlessly  the  elusive  will- 
o'-the-wisp  of  perfection,  remember  al- 
ways that  style  ceases  to  be  good  the  mo- 
ment that  It  is  cultivated  for  its  own  sake 
and  not  simply  as  an  integral  part  of  the 
whole  unified  structure.  They  teach  a 
great  deal  about  the  importance  of  onomat- 
opoeia as  practised  by  Homer  and  Vergil; 
and  I  think  that  a  great  many  young  stu- 
V  dents  gather  the  idea  that  It  is  a  quality 
which  ought  to  flaunt  itself  before  the  eye 
and  ear  so  that  as  one  scans  certain  lines 
of  the  Iliad  or  the  JEneid  one's  predominat- 
ing thought  should  be:  How  wonderfully 
the  rhythm  and  the  consonant  pattern  here 
suggests  the  poet's  meaning.  Now  this, 
of  course,  is  a  fallacy,  and  there  is  no  bet- 
ter way  of  showing  that  fallacy  than  by 
quoting  Daudet's  delicious  little  anec- 
dote : 

[238] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  STYLE 

I  shall  never  forget  the  famous:  Quadrupe- 
dante  putrem' sonitu  quatit.  ...  It  was  al- 
ways cited  to  us  as  an  example  of  onomatopoeia, 
and  my  teacher  had  persuaded  me  that  one  might 
mistake  it  for  the  gallop  of  a  horse. 

One  day,  wishing  to  frighten  my  little  sister, 
who  had  a  great  fear  of  horses,  I  came  up  be- 
hind her  and  cried,  "  Quadrupedante  putrem/* 
and  so  forth.  Well,  the  little  thing  wasn't 
frightened ! 

Onomatopoeia,  like  everything  else  per- 
taining to  style,  is  used  properly  when  it 
does  not  obtrude  itself,  when  it  helps  us 
to  form  a  mental  picture  without  our  be- 
ing aware  by  what  agency  the  author  has 
attained  his  result.  Take,  for  instance, 
one  of  the  most  extreme  instances  in  mod- 
ern writing  of  an  attempt  to  fit  sound  to 
meaning  —  the  libretti  to  Wagner's  Ring, 
When  you  read  the  text  quietly  by  your- 
self you  feel  that  the  whole  thing  has  been 
overdone ;  the  various  tricks  of  alliteration 

[239] 


THE  QUESTION  OF  STYLE 

stick  out  like  so  many  bristles.  But  when 
this  same  text  is  applied  to  the  purpose 
for  which  it  was  intended,  you  notice  none 
of  this,  because  the  sound  and  the  meaning 
blend  so  perfectly  with  the  rhythm  of  the 
music. 

And  in  all  elements  affecting  style  this 
same  principle  applies.  Any  ornament 
which  is  used  solely  because  it  is  orna- 
ment, solely  because  the  author  wishes  to 
use  his  subject  to  call  attention  to  his  man- 
ner rather  than  make  his  manner  do 
obeisance  to  his  theme,  Is  vulgar  ornament, 
as  offensive  to  good  taste  as  over-dress  in 
women.  In  style,  as  in  everything  else 
pertaining  to  the  craftsmanship  of  writing, 
learn  to  practise  ''that  fine  art  which  so 
artfully  ail  things  conceals." 


[240] 


VIII 
THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  TRANSLATING 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE   TECHNIQUE   OF   TRANSLATING 

There  seems  to  be  a  widespread  and  un- 
fortunate belief  that  there  Is  no  such  thing 
as  a  technique  of  translating;  or  that,  If 
there  Is,  It  Is  a  negligible  matter, —  some- 
thing which  Is  unconsciously  absorbed 
along  with  the  power  to  render  Into 
English  OUendorfian  sentences  after  the 
fashion  of  "  No,  I  have  not  the  green  um- 
brella of  your  deaf  grandmother,  but  the 
big  Russian  Is  up  a  tree."  Translation, 
so  the  argument  seems  to  run.  Is  an  even 
simpler  matter  than  original  work:  the 
latter  requires  pen.  Ink  and  paper,  and  a 
certain  natural  aptitude;  translation  re- 
quires only  pen,  Ink  and  paper, —  the  for- 
eign author  Is  expected  to  supply  the  nat- 
[243] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  TRANSLATING 

ural  aptitude.  Here,  on  the  one  hand,  is 
the  book  to  be  translated;  and  here,  on 
the  other,  is  a  stout,  able-bodied  dictionary 
which  can  be  relied  on  to  give  some  sort  of 
an  equivalent  for  each  of  the  foreign 
words.  A  little  patient  plodding  and  in- 
dustrious thumbing  of  the  pages, — and 
there  you  are ! 

Such  is  the  genesis  of  a  good  deal  of 
the  mediocre  translation  which  in  recent 
years  has  brought  the  whole  craft  into 
disrepute.  The  prevailing  modern  atti- 
tude, in  this  country  at  least,  is  well  illus- 
trated by  a  sentence  in  a  popular  novel  of 
the  present  season.  The  author,  wishing 
to  impress  upon  us  his  heroine's  want  of 
culture  and  of  literary  standards,  remarks 
that  she  will  read  anything,  ranging  all  the 
way  from  works  of  real  worth  to  ten-cent 
translations  of  French  novels.  It  appar- 
ently did  not  occur  to  that  author  that  a 
ten-cent  translation  of  a  French  novel  is 
[244] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  TRANSLATING 

quite  as  likely  to  be  a  masterpiece  as  are 
the  great  majority  of  current  American 
novels  which  will  probably  never  be  trans- 
lated into  any  sort  of  foreign  edition,  ten- 
cent  or  otherwise. 

Now,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  there  is  a 
technique  of  translating  and  one  which  is 
neither  quickly  nor  easily  acquired.  Wal- 
ter Pater's  comparison  of  translating  to  a 
copy  of  a  picture  made  through  tracing 
paper  sounds  clever  but  is  misleading. 
Mechanical  aid  in  rendering  one  language 
into  another  is  precisely  the  sort  of  aid 
which  must  be  most  scrupulously  avoided. 
The  mere  ability  to  hold  a  pencil  and  copy 
the  strokes  line  by  line  does  not  even  make 
up  the  alphabet  of  the  craft.  You  might 
spend  your  life  putting  tracing  paper  over 
Raphael's  Madonna  della  Sedia  without 
ever  getting  more  than  a  caricature  of  the 
original.  It  takes  a  long  apprenticeship 
and  a  specially  developed  skill  to  enable  a 
[245] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  TRANSLATING 

painter  to  produce  on  canvas  a  really 
worthy  copy  of  a  great  master. 

And  yet  a  good  many  beginners  in  writ- 
ing persist  in  believing  that  there  is  a 
market  for  their  amateur  translations. 
They  do  not  seem  to  realise  that  for  sev- 
eral reasons  there  is  much  more  hope  for 
their  crude  original  work  than  for  their 
equally  crude  distortions  of  the  work  of 
someone  else.  Early  work  usually  shows 
a  certain  amount  of  proportion  between 
subject  and  execution.  The  great  ma- 
jority of  short  stories  that  may  honestly 
be  called  "  not  half  bad  "  in  workmanship 
are  also  "  not  half  bad  "  in  theme.  But 
when  a  beginner  attempts  to  translate  one 
of  the  world's  classics,  or  even  the  latest 
volume  of  some  widely  read  modern 
novelist,  he  is  clothing  big  thoughts  in 
unworthy  phrases  and  his  deficiencies  of 
style  are  doubly  glaring  by  contrast. 

Nevertheless,   the  practice  of  translat- 

[246] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  TRANSLATING 

ing,  as  the  quotation  from  James  Russell 
Lowell  In  the  preceding  chapter  pointed 
out,  Is  one  of  the  best  possible  means  of 
acquiring  style ;  and  If  practised  merely  as 
an  exercise  and  without  any  misplaced 
ambition  for  publication,  It  Is  a  training 
which  cannot  be  too  strongly  recommended 
to  the  apprentice  In  the  craft  of  writing. 
The  only  trouble  with  LowelPs  utterance 
is  that  he  limits  the  value  of  translation 
to  a  single  element  of  style,  namely,  pre- 
cision. As  a  matter  of  fact,  It  Is  one  of 
the  most  valuable  aids  which  we  possess 
to  acquiring  an  appreciation,  not  merely 
of  a  precision  of  words,  but  of  new  rhythms 
and  new  possibilities  of  linguistic  effects. 
A  trained  translator  of  sterling  authors 
soon  learns  that  If  he  hopes  to  preserve, 
with  a  fair  amount  of  fidelity,  the  distinc- 
tive quality  of  the  original  author,  he  must 
convey  over  into  his  own  language  some- 
thing of  the  linguistic  harmony  and  the 
[247] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  TRANSLATING 

phrase  cadence.  The  present  writer 
knows  from  experience  how  hard  a  task 
this  Is  and  what  hours  of  labour  It  some- 
times takes  to  reproduce  in  English  a 
single  paragraph  of  French  or  Italian  or 
Spanish,  with  even  an  approximate  re- 
tention of  the  original  sound  pattern  and 
the  original  number  of  syllables.  Of 
course,  It  Is  only  now  and  then  In  some 
passage  of  particular  lyric  beauty  that  care 
like  this  becomes  Imperative ;  but  the  ordi- 
nary hack  translator  seldom  If  ever  trou- 
bles himself  at  all  about  such  matters.  The 
ambitious  craftsman,  on  the  contrary,  may 
well  spend  many  a  day  and  week  after  this 
fashion  because  he  will  thus  learn  a  sur- 
prising amount  of  sheer  linguistic  gymnas- 
tics. Translation,  whether  from  Greek, 
Latin,  or  some  modern  tongue,  is  to  the 
literary  craftsman  like  chest  weights  and 
Indian  clubs  to  the  college  athlete :  it  brings 
his  mental  muscles  into  training. 

[248] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  TRANSLATING 

Now  if  we  want  to  train  ourselves  to 
translate  well,  the  first  step  is  to  get  fixed 
clearly  in  our  minds  on  which  of  several 
principles  the  best  kind  of  translation  is 
based.  It  was  Lowell  who  after  subdivid- 
ing translation  under  the  two  heads  of 
paraphrase  and  reproduction,  went  on  to 
say: 

The  paraphrase  is  a  plaster-cast  of  the  Grecian 
Urn;  the  reproduction,  If  by  a  man  of  genius, 
such  as  the  late  Fitzgerald,  is  like  Keat's  Ode 
which  makes  the  figures  move  and  the  leaves 
tremble  again,  if  not  with  the  old  life,  with  a 
sorcery  which  deceives  the  fancy. 

As  between  literal  paraphrase  and  a 
certain  degree  of  freedom,  Lowell  is  un- 
doubtedly right  in  deciding  in  favour  of 
the  second.  Common  sense,  as  well  as 
the  verdict  of  literary  history,  supports 
the  contention  that  any  translation  which 
is  to  survive  must  be  the  work  of  some- 
[249] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  TRANSLATING 

body  possessed  of  a  certain  individual 
bigness,  somebody  who  himself  has  some- 
thing to  say,  something  original  with 
which  to  replace  that  delicate  and  volatile 
essence  that  is  inevitably  lost  In  the  process 
of  transference.  Of  all  the  arts  and 
crafts,  translation  is  most  closely  akin  to 
acting.  The  translator,  like  the  actor, 
must  temporarily  sink  his  personality  in 
that  of  another;  he  must  speak  not  his  own 
thoughts,  but  the  lines  that  are  set  down 
for  him.  But  every  translator,  like  every 
actor,  has  a  right  to  his  own  conception  of 
his  part;  he  can,  so  to  speak,  supply  his 
own  gestures,  his  own  stage  business. 
And,  if  he  is  an  actor  devoid  of  origi- 
nality, if  he  has  no  ideas  to  supply,  no  ges- . 
tures  of  his  own,  no  power  to  make  his 
personality  tell  upon  the  stage,  then  at 
best  his  must  be  a  sorry  performance.- 
Edgar  Allan  Poe  is  not  the  only  writer 
who  has  formulated  the  following  theory 
[250] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  TRANSLATING 

of  the  best  translation ;  but  no  one  else  has 
expressed  it  half  so  well: 

There  is  one  point  (never  yet,  I  believe,  no- 
ticed) which,  obviously,  should  be  considered  in 
translation.  We  should  so  render  the  original 
that  the  version  should  impress  the  people  for 
whom  it  is  intended  just  as  the  original  im- 
presses the  people  for  whom  it  (the  original)  is 
intended. 

Now,  if  we  rigorously  translate  mere  local 
idiosyncrasies  of  phrase  (to  say  nothing  of  idioms) 
we  inevitably  distort  the  author's  designed  im- 
pression. We  are  sure  to  produce  a  whimsical, 
at  least,  if  not  always  a  ludicrous,  effect — for 
novelties,  in  a  case  of  this  kind,  are  incongruities 
and  oddities.  A  distinction,  of  course,  should  be 
observed  between  those  peculiarities  which  ap- 
pertain to  the  nation  and  those  which  belong  to 
the  author  himself,  for  these  latter  will  have  a 
similar  effect  upon  all  nations,  and  should  be 
literally  translated.     .     .     . 

The  phraseology  of  every  nation  has  a  taint 
of  drollery  about  it  in  the  ears  of  every  other  na- 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  TRANSLATING 

tion  speaking  a  diflerent  tongue.  Now,  to  con- 
vey the  true  spirit  of  an  author,  this  taint  should 
be  corrected,  in  translation.  We  should  pride 
ourselves  less  upon  literality  and  more  upon  dex- 
terity at  paraphrase.  Is  it  not  clear  that,  by  such 
dexterity,  a  translation  may  he  made  t@  convey  to 
a  foreigner  a  juster  conception  of  an  original  than 
could  the  original  itself  f 

To  produce  upon  an  English  reader  the 
identical  impression  produced  by  any  par- 
ticular original  work  upon  an  ancient 
Greek  or  Roman,  a  modern  Frenchman 
or  Italian  is,  of  course,  an  unattainable 
Ideal.  The  thing  at  best  can  be  done  only 
approximately.  In  the  case  of  the  Iliad, 
for  instance,  a  certain  dominant  note  felt 
by  every  Greek  must  have  been  that  of 
intense  patriotism,  a  thrill  of  pride  at  the 
thought  of  his  own  nation's  achievements, 
—  and  of  course  no  dexterity  of  transla- 
tion could  ever  duplicate  that  thrill  in  the 
alien  Anglo-Saxon  reader.  But  this  is  no 
[252], 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  TRANSLATING 

reason  for  adopting  the  fallacious  theory 
of  translation  laid  down  by  Matthew 
Arnold  in  his  well-known  essay  On  Trans- 
lating Homer: 

No  one  can  tell  him  (the  would-be  translator) 
how  Homer  affected  the  Greeks,  but  there  are 
those  who  can  tell  him  how  Homer  affects  them. 
These  are  scholars,  who  possess,  at  the  same  time 
with  knowledge  of  Greek,  adequate  poetical  taste 
and  feeling.  No  translation  will  seem  to  them 
of  much  worth  compared  with  the  original ;  they 
alone  can  say  whether  the  translation  produces 
more  or  less  the  same  effect  upon  them  as  the 
original.  They  are  the  only  competent  tribunals 
in  this  matter ;  the  Greeks  are  dead ;  the  unlearned 
Englishman  has  not  the  data  for  judging;  and  no 
man  can  safely  confide  in  his  own  single  judg- 
ment of  his  own  work.  Let  not  the  translator, 
then,  trust  to  his  notions  of  what  the  ancient 
Greeks  would  have  thought  of  him;  he  will  lose 
himself  in  the  vague.  Let  him  not  trust  to  what 
the  ordinary  English  reader  thinks  of  him;  he 
will  be  taking  the  blind  for  his  guide.     Let  him 

[253] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  TRANSLATING 

not  trust  to  his  own  judgment  of  his  own  work; 
he  may  be  misled  by  individual  caprices.  Let 
him  ask  how  his  work  affects  those  who  both 
know  Greek  and  can  appreciate  poetry;  whether 
to  read  it  gives  the  Provost  of  Eton,  or  Professor 
Thompson  at  Cambridge,  or  Professor  Jowett 
here  in  Oxford,  at  all  the  same  feeling  which  to 
read  the  original  gives  them. 

It  is  difficult  to  imagine  any  method  of 
translation  better  calculated  to  distort  If 
not  destroy  the  spirit  of  the  original  than 
this  advice  of  Matthew  Arnold's.  What- 
ever Impression  the  Iliad  made  upon  the 
ancient  Greeks,  it  is  safe  to  assume  that 
It  was  as  far  removed  as  possible  from 
the  impression  that  it  makes  to-day  upon 
the  typical  middle-aged  professor  of  dead 
languages,  profoundly  versed  in  archae- 
ology and  syntax.  It  is  very  much  as 
though  he  were  to  say  to  the  contempo- 
rary translator  of  Flaubert  or  Maupas- 

[254] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  TRANSLATING 

sant:  "Do  not  trouble  yourself  about 
what  the  modern  Frenchman  thinks  of 
these  authors;  do  not  trouble  yourself 
about  what  the  modern  Englishman  is 
likely  to  think;  put  no  faith  in  what  you 
yourself  think, —  but  try  to  imagine  that 
you  are  translating  for  the  benefit  of  a 
small  audience  of  people  who  know  French 
as  well  as  English,  who  by  long  residence 
have  absorbed  the  customs  of  the  country 
and  who  by  nature  and  training  have 
rather  more  interest  in  literature  than  they 
have  in  life."  Unfortunately  for  this 
theory,  it  is  the  ordinary  English  reader 
who  is  going  to  decide  what  he  thinks  of 
a  foreign  author  given  to  him  in  transla- 
tion; he,  and  no  one  else,  is  the  man  who 
must  be  satisfied.  And  you  can  satisfy 
him  only  by  remembering  constantly  that 
a  translator  is  an  interpreter  and  guide. 
It  is  not  enough  for  him  to  know  exhaus- 
tively the  meaning  of  the  original,  but  he 
[255] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  TRANSLATING 

must  also  realise  the  limitations  of  his 
English  audience  and  foresee  what  por- 
tions of  a  foreign-work  will  be  unintelligi- 
ble for  other  reasons  than  that  of  a  for- 
eign tongue.  The  translator  of  the  high- 
est type  is  in  a  measure  an  appreciative 
and  Indulgent  critic  whose  first  aim  Is  to 
make  his  audience  share  his  own  enthusi- 
asm for  his  subject,  to  bring  out  not  merely 
some  one  beauty,  but  all  the  beauties  of 
the  original;  to  make  us  feel  not  merely 
an  author's  theme  but  his  individual  style, 
not  only  the  action  of  his  story  but  its 
pervading  atmosphere. 

Let  us  ask  ourselves  briefly  what  are 
the  requirements  for  this  ideal  type  of 
translator.  He  must  have,  first  of  all,  a 
thorough  mastery  of  the  foreign  language, 
and  secondly,  of  his  own;  he  must  have  a 
special  and  Intimate  acquaintance  with  the 
author  he  has  undertaken  to  translate,  and 
lastly,  he  needs  an  Intuitive  sense  of  the 

[256] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  TRANSLATING 

limitations  of  the  public  for  whom  he  is 
translating. 

Now,  when  we  speak  of  a  thorough 
mastery  of  a  foreign  language,  we  mean 
that  sort  of  knowledge  which  grasps  the 
sense  of  a  printed  page  without  conscious 
effort,  appreciating  all  those  nicer  subtle- 
ties of  language  that  lie  beyond  the  reach 
of  grammar  and  lexicon.  There  are  trans- 
lators who  from  long  practise  can  glibly 
roll  forth  a  smooth  and  readable  transla- 
tion from  a  book  they  have  never  seen 
before  at  a  speed  which  taxes  the  power 
of  their  stenographer  to  keep  pace  with 
them.  No  matter  how  experienced  trans- 
lators of  this  sort  may  be,  they  are  to  be 
mistrusted  for  work  demanding  a  fine  lin- 
guistic appreciation.  There  is  in  all  work 
of  a  high  literary  order  a  certain  quality 
peculiar  to  the  genius  of  the  language. 
As  your  eye  travels  down  the  printed  page 
you  catch  something  which  you  know  can 
[257] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  TRANSLATING 

not  be  carried  over  In  full  measure  Into 
another  tongue;  you  must  pause  and  hesi- 
tate and  reconsider  In  a  constant  and  ever 
recurring  effort  to  reduce  such  sacrifice  to  a 
minimum.  And  for  this  reason,  when  you 
see  another  translator  pushing  blithely  on- 
ward undaunted  by  such  difficulties,  the 
natural  conclusion  is  that  he  Is  afflicted 
with  a  certain  mental  color-blindness,  se- 
renely unaware  that  he  is  missing  the  more 
delicate  shading  of  verbal  tones. 

And  the  same  nicety  of  sense  of  the 
meaning  of  words,  the  rhythm  and  ca- 
dence of  sentences  is  demanded  of  the 
translator  regarding  the  language  Into 
which  he  is  translating.  A  far  greater 
wealth  of  resource  Is  needed  by  him  than 
by  the  original  craftsman.  A  writer  who 
is  doing  creative  work  Is  free  to  choose 
his  own  vocabulary;  he  may  affect  the  ab- 
ruptness and  simplicity  of  Anglo-Saxon 
monosyllables   or  he  may   emulate   what 

[258] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  TRANSLATING 

Carlyle  has  called  the  "  fine  buckram 
style"  of  Dr.  Johnson;  he  may  use  few 
words  or  he  may  roll  them  out  in  a  rush- 
ing, surging  flood.  But  the  translator  is 
in  all  these  respects  bound  by  his  foreign 
model;  he,  more  than  any  other  writer, 
must  be  possessed  of  an  infinite  resource 
of  word  and  phrase, —  because  sometimes 
only  a  hair's  breadth  lies  between  humour 
and  pathos,  between  the  tragic  and  the 
grotesque;  and  that  hair's  breadth  the 
translator  is  bound  to  preserve. 

Thirdly,  before  trying  to  put  into  Eng- 
lish even  some  very  simple  and  very  brief 
piece  of  writing  from  a  foreign  pen,  it  is 
your  duty  as  a  good  craftsman  to  know 
your  author, —  not  merely  to  know  the  one 
specimen  of  his  work  that  you  are  trans- 
lating but  a  sufficient  number  of  his  vol- 
umes to  give  you  the  right  to  claim  an 
intimate  knowledge  of  his  style,  his  struc- 
ture, his  philosophy  of  life.  You  may  be 
[259] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  TRANSLATING 

able  to  produce  a  fairly  adequate  render- 
ing of  line  Passion  Dans  le  Desert  or  of 
La  Fete  a  Coqueville  without  ever  having 
heard  the  phrases,  Comedie  Humaine  or 
Les  Rougon-Macquart.  Yet  it  is  safe  to 
say  that  there  would  be  something  miss- 
ing, something  of  that  intangible  person- 
ality which  lies  behind  the  words  and 
which  would  persistently  elude  any  trans- 
lator who  was  not  thoroughly  Imbued  with 
the  writings  of  Balzac  or  of  Zola  in  their 
entirety.  I  remember  a  striking  Instance  of 
this  in  the  case  of  a  translation  published 
some  years  ago  of  Stendhal's  Chartreuse 
de  Parme,  Now  anyone  who  Is  familiar 
with  Stendhal  knows  that  his  style  was 
short,  abrupt,  rather  bold,  formed  as  he 
himself  ironically  Insisted  on  a  daily  read- 
ing of  the  Civil  Code.  But  this  the  trans- 
lator In  question  did  not  happen  to  know; 
It  was  safe  to  assume  that  aside  from  the 
Chartreuse  de  Parme  he  had  never  read 
[260] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  TRANSLATING 

a  line  of  Stendhal.  And  not  liking  the 
plainness  of  the  style  and  quite  missing  the 
terse,  crisp  forcefulness  of  it,  he  proceeded 
to  embellish  it  in  the  English  translation, 
smoothing  and  amplifying  and  incidentally 
falling  into  numerous  amusing  blunders. 
The  simple  statement,  for  instance,  that  a 
carriage  was  heard  "  approaching  at  a 
trot,"  was  expanded  by  the  translator  into 
"  the  brisk  trot  of  the  two  sturdy  little 
horses,"  regardless  of  the  fact  that  the 
context  showed  that  the  carriage  in  ques- 
tion was  a  one-horse  vehicle. 

And,  fourthly,  it  is  essential  to  keep  in 
mind  the  limitations  of  the  special  public 
for  whom  you  are  translating.  A  version 
of  a  classic  author  intended  as  a  "  crib  " 
for  college  students  is  necessarily  a  very 
different  sort  of  production  from  a  ren- 
dering intended  for  the  general  reader. 
In  the  former  case,  the  intention  is  to  em- 
phasize the  points  of  difference  between 

[2613 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  TRANSLATING 

classic  habits  of  speech  and  thought,  and 
our  own;  in  the  latter,  the  intention  is  to 
disguise  these  points  of  difference.  The 
one  translation  says:  here  is  an  unaccus- 
tomed road,  steep  and  craggy  and  full  of 
ruts;  jolt  over  it  as  best  you  can.  The 
whole  purpose  of  the  other  is  to  make  the 
road  so  smooth  that  you  almost  forget 
that  the  road  lies  in  a  foreign  country. 

The  words,  almost  forget,  are  used  ad- 
visedly. We  have  seen  that  the  aim  of 
the  ideal  translation  is  to  place  us  as  nearly 
as  possible  in  the  place  of  readers  for 
whom  the  original  is  intended.  Now, 
take  a  French  novel,  the  scene  of  which  is 
laid  in  Paris.  A  Frenchman,  reading  this 
novel,  would  on  the  one  hand  feel  no  sense 
of  strange  environment;  but,  on  the  other, 
he  would  not  for  a  moment  lose  sight  of 
the  fact  that  the  action  was  taking  place 
in  Paris,  and  there  is  but  one  Paris  in  the 
whole  wide  world.  Now,  in  translating, 
[262] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  TRANSLATING 

It  Is  Impossible  to  preserve  both  these  im- 
pressions; you  must  either  In  a  measure 
sacrifice  the  environment,  the  milieu,  or  else 
you  must  convey  to  the  Anglo-Saxon  reader 
some  sense  of  strangeness.  It  Is  a  matter 
of  compromise,  and  no  general  rules  can 
be  laid  down.  Take  for  example,  the 
whole  question  of  street  nomenclature: 
To  the  reader  with  no  knowledge  of  a 
foreign  tongue,  rue  and  strasse  and  via 
and  calle  necessarily  strike  the  eye  and  ear 
with  a  certain  degree  of  queerness, —  yet, 
to  call  these  foreign  public  ways  streets 
would  seem  still  queerer.  One  expects  the 
signs  in  a  foreign  city  to  look  different, 
just  as  one  expects  to  be  wet  when  one 
goes  In  swimming.  It  Is  not  the  normal 
rule  of  life  to  be  wet,  but  It  would  seem 
considerably  queerer  to  go  In  swimming 
and  remain  dry.  It  was  possible  for 
Thackeray,  In  light  verse,  to  say  whimsi- 
cally, "  Rue  Neuve  des  Petits  Champs  the 
[263] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  TRANSLATING 

name  Is,  The  New  Street  of  the  Little 
Fields ;  *'  but  It  would  be  sheer  grotesque- 
ness  In  serious  prose  to  speak  of  the  Place 
of  the  Star,  and  the  Avenue  of  the  Elyslan 
Fields. 

Similarly,  foreign  titles  of  courtesy  and 
conventional  terms  of  address  cannot  be 
translated  without  producmg  a  curious  hy- 
brid effect  utterly  out  of  tone  with  the  con- 
text. Mme  de  Montespan  has  a  foreign 
sound;  Mrj.  De  Montespan  Is  neither  more 
nor  less  than  burlesque.  Even  the  least 
travelled  modern  reader  knows  that  in 
Berlin  people  greet  each  other  as  Herr  and 
Frau,  in  Florence  as  Signor  and  Signora, 
and  not  as  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Of  course  there 
are  certain  anomalous  cases  that  are  rather 
baffling;  In  Germany  especially  the  compli- 
cated forms  of  address,  Herr  Ober-Lieu- 
tenant,  Frau  Professorin,  and  the  like,  lead 
the  translator  between  a  Scylla  of  incon- 
sistency and  a  Charybdis  of  farce-comedy. 

E264] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  TRANSLATING 

Here,  as  always  in  translating,  the  one 
safe  rule  is,  compromise, —  and  in  this  the 
instinct  of  the  born  translator  is  revealed. 
But  there  are  certain  problems,  certain 
pitfalls,  that  cannot  be  foreseen,  any  more 
than  they  can  be  classified,  which  every 
now  and  then  arise  to  disconcert  and  ham- 
per the  translator,  usually  at  a  moment 
when  everything  seems  to  be  running  most 
smoothly.  There  are,  for  instance,  cer- 
tain plays  upon  words,  certain  effects  de- 
pendent upon  the  sound  or  cadence  of  the 
original  that  is  simply  untranslatable.  Mr. 
William  Archer,  in  his  preface  to  the  col- 
lected works  of  Ibsen,  points  out  that  this 
type  of  difficulty  is  curiously  frequent  in 
the  writings  of  the  great  Norwegian  dram- 
atist, and  cites  in  particular  the  following 
illustration : 

In  not  a  few  cases  the  difficulties  have  proved 
sheer  impossibilities.  I  will  cite  only  one  in- 
stance.    Writing  of  The  Master  Builder,  a  very 

C265] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  TRANSLATING 

competent,  and  indeed  generous,  critic  finds  in 
it  "  a  curious  example  of  perhaps  inevitable 
inadequacy.  ...  *  Duty !  Duty !  Duty ! ' 
Hilda  once  exclaims  in  a  scornful  outburst, 
*  What  a  short,  sharp,  stinging  word ! '  The 
epithets  do  not  seem  specially  apt.  But  in  the 
original  she  cries  out,  *  Plight !  Plight !  Plight !  * 
And  the  very  vi^ord  stings  and  snaps."  I  sub- 
mit that  in  this  criticism  there  is  one  superfluous 
word  —  to  wit,  the  "  perhaps  "  which  qualifies 
"  inevitable."  ...  It  might  be  possible,  no 
doubt,  to  adapt  Hilda's  phrase  to  the  English 
word  and  say,  "  It  sounds  like  the  swish  of  a 
whip  lash,"  or  something  to  that  effect.  But 
this  is  a  sort  of  freedom  which,  rightly  or 
wrongly,  I  hold  inadmissible. 

An  analogous  case,  in  my  own  experi- 
ence, occurred  In  an  attempt  to  translate 
the  opening  chapter  of  Don  Gesualdo, 
from  the  Italian  of  Giovanni  Verga.  It 
went  quite  smoothly, — Verga's  style  Is  the 
essence  of  simplicity,  —  until  I  reached  the 
place  where  the  Trao  Palace  Is  on  fire,  and 
[266] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  TRANSLATING 

old  Don  Ferdinando,  "  looking  like  a  mad- 
man, with  a  face  of  parchment,  kept  re- 
peating asthmatlcally,  precisely  like  a  duck : 
*  This  way  I  this  way !  '  "  Now,  in  Eng- 
lish this  statement  seems  devoid  of  signifi- 
cance; it  is  not  the  habit  of  any  ducks  of 
which  we  have  ever  had  experience,  to  re- 
peat "  This  way !  this  way !  "  It  happens, 
however,  that  what  Don  Ferdinando  said 
in  Italian  was,  "  Di  qua  I  di  qua !  "  — 
which  seems  to  be  fairly  good  duck  lan- 
guage, whether  in  Sicily  or  America,  — 
but  unfortunately  one  of  thos,e  happy  ef- 
fects that  refuse  to  be  translated. 

Lastly,  a  word  or  two  of  practical  ad- 
vice about  the  best  way  of  achieving  results 
in  translating.  Remember  that  the  trans- 
lator is  in  a  certain  sense  a  dual  personal- 
ity; he  must  be  on  the  one  hand  a  born 
Frenchman,  and  a  born  Englishman  or 
American  on  the  other.  Now,  no  one  can 
be  to  the  full  extent  these  two  things  at 

[267] 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  TRANSLATING 

once;  and  therefore  no  flawless  piece  of 
translating  can  be  produced  at  a  single  sit- 
ting. The  best  way,  then,  is  to  saturate 
yourself  with  the  foreign  language,  and 
make  a  first  rough  draft  in  English,  as 
complete  as  possible,  but  clumsy  in  vocabu- 
lary and  ragged  in  idiom.  Put  it  away 
for  a  few  days ;  and  then,  with  the  original 
out  of  sight  and  out  of  mind,  proceed  to 
recast  and  to  refine.  A  good  translation 
is  like  a  good  vintage;  the  first  draft  is  sim- 
ply the  pressing  of  the  grapes,  —  the  best 
you  can  do  is  to  make  sure  that  you  have 
expelled  the  juice  to  the  last  drop.  But 
you  must  give  it  time  to  age,  before  it  is 
ready  to  be  put  on  the  market. 


[268] 


INDEX 

PAGE 

Adam's  Diar^ 51 

Addison,  Joseph 56 

^neid,  The 238 

Alice's  Adventures  in  Wonderland     .     .     .     .119 

Amicis,  Edmondo  de 139 

Annunzio,  Gabriele  D' 230 

Appreciation  of  Literature,  The  (Woodberry)   .     69 

Archer,  William 265 

Argent  Dans  La  Litterature,  V 15 

Arnold,  Matthew, 54,  253,  254 

Art  of  Fiction,  The  (Henry  James)      ....     64 

Assommoir,  U 108 

Austen,   Jane 58 

Autobiography  of  Walter  Besant 14 

Autobiography  of  Anthony  Trollope  .  63,  71,  184 
Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast  Table,  The  .  .  194,  199 
Awkward   Age,    The 65,  66,  88,  138 

Bacon,  Francis  (Lord  Verulam) 56 

Balzac,  Honore  de  .      51,  85,  122,  123,  163,  166,  260 

Baudelaire,   Charles 218 

Belle  Helene,  La 107 

Benson,   A.   C 112 

Besant,  Sir  Walter 14,    40 

Bible,  The 93 

Birrell,  Augustine   .     .     , 58 

Boccaccio,  Giovanni 123 

Botticelli,   Sandro 68 

Bouguereau »    »    33 

[269] 


INDEX 

PAGE 

Bouvard  et  Pecuchet 171 

Bride  of  Abydos,  The 154 

Browne,  Sir  Thomas 218 

Byron,  Lord 153 

Camp,  Maxime  du 57 

Captains  Courageous 67 

Carlyle,  Thomas 116,  125,  259 

Cavalleria  Rusticana 145 

Cervantes 56,  121,  123 

Charivari 168 

Chartreuse  de  Parme 260 

Chevalier  de  Maison  Rouge loi 

Childe  Harold 55 

" College  Magazine,  A"  (Stevenson)   ....  218 

Comedie  Humaine,  La 85,  166,  260 

Conrad,  Joseph 232 

Contes  Drolatiques,  Les  (Balzac) 123 

Corsair,  The  (Byron) 154 

Cowper,  William 56 

Crawford,   Francis   Marion 93,  i95 

Curiosities  of  Literature   (Disraeli)    .     .     .     .153 

Dante 125 

Daudet,  Alphonse    ....    86,  100,  140,  231,  238 

David  CopperHeld 68 

Davidson,  A.  K loi 

Decameron,  The 68 

De  Coverley  Papers,  The 119 

Defoe,  Daniel 218 

De  Quincey,  Thomas 223,  233 

Dickens,   Charles      .  33,  60,  69,  97,  104,  105,  121,  122 

Disraeli,  Benjamin 153 

Divine  Comedy,  The 125 

Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde 89,    90 

Don  Gesualdo   (Verga) 266 

Don  Juan 220 

[270] 


INDEX 

PAGE 

Don  Quixote 68,  123 

Doumic,  Rene no 

Dumas,  Alexandre 30,  loi,  102,  no 

Edgeworth,  Marie I97 

Education  Sentimentdle,  U   (Flaubert)    ...  168 

Eliot,  George 56,  60,    97 

Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo    .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .227 

Epic  of  the  Wheat  (Frank  Norris)    ....    84 

Essay  on  Milton  (Macaulay) 92 

Essay  on  Style  (De  Quincey) 223 

Essay  on  Style  (Pater) 223 

Fete  &  Coqueville,  La 260 

Fielding,   Henry      ....      56,  60,  104,  121,  133 

Fitzgerald,  Edward 249 

Flaubert,  Gustave    .     12,  122,  167,  169,  171,  173,224, 

225,  226,  227,  237,  254 

France,   Anatole 58,  63,  149 

From  a  College  Window  (Benson)      .     .     .     .112 

Gautier,  Theophile S6,  57,  148,  163 

Ghirlandajo 68 

Gibbon,  Edward 88 

Gilbert,  Sir  William 202 

Gissing,  George 136 

Gogol 122 

Gosse,  Edmund 75 

Gulliver's  Travels 119 

Gyp 65,    66 

Hamlet 68,  104 

Hardy,  Thomas 108 

Harrison,  Frederic 91 

Hawthorne,  Nathaniel 97,  106,  218 

Hazlitt,  William 218 

Henry,  0 54 

[271] 


INDEX 

PAGE 

Hermana  San  Sulpicio,  La 63,  122 

Hewlett,  Maurice 136,  162,  163,  232 

Hill,  Professor  A.  S 31,  180,  219 

Holmes,  Oliver  Wendell 59,  199 

Homer 58,  121,  253,  238 

Howells,  William  Dean   ....     62,  6zt  96,  136 

Ibsen,  Henrik 105,  265 

Iliad,    The 107,  157,  238,  252,  254 

Innocents  Abroad 51 

"Is  It  Possible  to  Tell  a  Good  Book  From  a 
Bad  One?"  (Augustine  Birrell)    ....     58 

James,  Henry,      63,  64,  65,  69,  88,  118,  136,  137, 138, 

14s,  204,  205,  220 

.   Johnson,  Dr.  Samuel 259 

Jungle  Books,  The 119 

Keats,  John 136,  249 

Kipling,  Rudyard    .     .     ,     .    22,  54,  (6,  67,  75, 123, 

136,  230,  232 

La  Bfiiyere,  Jean  de 9 

Lamb,    Charles 218 

Lang,  Andrew 106 

Lavedan,  Henri 65 

Lettres  de  Jeunesse  (Zola) .71 

Life  of  Byron  (Moore) 55 

Life  of  Alexandre  Dumas  (A.  K  Davidson)    .  loi 

Light  That  Failed,  The 22,  67,  222 

Lovenjoul,   Spoelberch  de 85 

Lowell,  James  Russell,  51,  211,  223,  229,  235,  247,  249 

McTeague   (Frank  Norris) 8 

Macaulay,    Lord 92,  184,  193 

Macbeth 104 

Mackenzie,  Henry ;.i    .    56 

[272] 


INDEX 

PAGE 

Madame  B ovary  (Flaubert) 225 

Manzoni,  Alessandro 122 

Marble  Faun,  The 107 

Maupassant,  Guy  de,  12,  54,  63,  69,  no,  123,  229,  254 
Memories  and  Thoughts  (F.  Harrison)   ...    91 

Meredith,   George 75,  108,  112 

Merimee,  Prosper 148 

Milton,  John 56,  59,  I35,  136 

Miserahles,  Les 225 

Modern  Love 75 

Modern  Painters 32 

Montaigne,  Michel  de 218 

Montespan,  Madame  de 264 

Moore,  George 136 

Moore,  Thomas 55 

Moran  of  the  Lady  Letty  (Frank  Norris)    .     .      8 
My  Literary  Passions  (Howells) 96 

Norris,  Frank     . 8,    84 

Notes  From  Life  j^JDaudet) 100 

Novel:  What  It  Is,  The  (Crawford)   ....    93 
Numa  Roumestan  (Daudet) 140,  141 

Obermann 218 

Octopus,  The  (Frank  Norris) 85 

Ollivant,   Alfred 232 

On  Translating  Homer  (Matthew  Arnold)   .     .  253 

Othello 104 

Our  English  (A.  S.  Hill) 31 

Ovid 153 

Paradise  Lost 68 

Passion  dans  le  Desert,  Une 260 

Pater,   Walter 50,  211,  223,  225,  245 

Pattison,  Mark 91 

Phillips,  David  Graham 26 

Philosophy  of  Composition,  The  (Poe)   ...  98 

Pied  de  Momie  (Gautier)     .......  148 

[273] 


INDEX 

PAGE 

Pierre  et  Jean  (Maupassant) 63,  229 

Pilgrim's  Progress,  The   (Bunyan)      .     .     .     .119 

Pit,  The  (Frank  Norris) 85 

Poe,  Edgar  Allan    .     .  54,  63,  98,  100,  123,  194,  250 

Pope,  Alexander 55 

Portraits  Contemporains  (Gautier)      ....   164 
Procurateur  de  Judee,  Le   (Anatole  France)     .  149 

Quintillian 230 

Rabelais,  Frangois 56,  121 

Raven,  The  (Poe) 63,  100 

Redcoat  Captain  (Ollivant) 119 

Reade,  Charles 97 

Richardson,    Samuel 56,    68 

Robertson,  Morgan 40 

Robinson  Crusoe  (Defoe) 41 

Rod,  Edouard 33 

Roderick  Random  (Smollett) 133 

Rois  en  Exile,  Les  (Daudet) 86 

Romanciers  Naturalist es  (Zola) 167 

Roman  Empire,  The  Decline  and  Fall  of  the     .     88 

Rossetti,   Dante  Gabriel 136 

Rouge  et  le  Noir,  Le  (Stendhal) 225 

Rougon-Macquart,   Les 260 

Rousseau,  Jean  Jacques 56 

Ruskin,   John 32,  39,  ii9 

Sainte  Beuve i97 

Saintsbury,  Professor  George     ....     220,  221 

Sand,  George 122 

Scott,   Sir  Walter 224 

Shakespeare,  William  .     .      56,  75,  92,  104,  105,  136 
"  Shakespeare  Once  More  "  (Lowell)  .     .     .     .51 

Smollett,  Tobias 56,  68,  104,  133 

Snaith,  J.  C 232 

Sonnets  From  the  Portuguese  (Mrs.  Browning)     75 
Stendhal 182,  260,  261 

[274] 


INDEX 

PAGE 

Sterne,  Laurence     .......      56,  68,  133 

Stevenson,  Robert  Louis,  ^2^  89,  90,  218,  220^  221,  2.22, 

Stevenson,  Mrs.  Robert  Louis 89 

Stowe,  Harriet  Beecher 95 

Sullivan,  Sir  Arthur 202 

Tarn  O'Shanter  (Burns) 108 

Terry,  Ellen 73 

Thackeray,  William  Makepeace  .     .     65,  69,  97, 104, 

105,  121,  122,  263 
Thoreau,  Henry  David     ....    59,  87,  154,  170 

Tolstoy,  Count  Leo 122 

Tom  Jones  (Fielding) 68,  133 

Tom  Sawyer  (Mark  Twain) 51 

Traill,  H.  D 220 

Treasure  Island  (Stevenson) 41 

Trois  Mousquetaires,  Les  (Dumas)     ....     30 
Trollope,  Anthony  .     .     .63,  105,  143,  173,  174,  184 

Tristram  Shandy  (Sterne) 133 

Turguenief 97,  'i-Z?,  257 

Twain,    Mark 50 

Valdes,  Armando  Palacio     .     .     .     ,     6z,  121,  122 

Vanity  Fair  (Thackeray) 65,   68 

Venus  D'llle  (Merimee) 148 

Verga,  Giovanni 145,  266 

Vergil 238 

Wagner,  Richard 239 

War  and  Peace  (Tolstoy) 122 

Wendell,   Barrett 192,  201 

What  Maisie  Knew  (Henry  James)    ....  145 

Wister,    Owen 80 

Woodberry,  Professor  George 69 

Wordsworth,  William  .     .     .50,  51,  56,  93,  135,  218 

Zola,  Emile,  15,  21,  63,  71,  95,  i39,  140,  167,  168, 171, 

237,  260 

-     [275] 


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